


Unseen Flight

by laniew1



Series: Project Orion [1]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2019-10-25 01:23:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 40,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17715383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1
Summary: Alex keeps all his secrets compartmentalized, in alphabetical order with notes on how likely they are to completely screw up his life’s trajectory; it’s how he stays sane.





	1. Chapter 1

**Unseen Flight 1/?**

He has a schedule for how his days go now. Deviations from that schedule lead him to make questionable decisions.

Decisions like falling into Michael’s bed.

That hadn’t necessarily been _bad_ , he’d had fun, Michael’d had fun, it had been everything that came after it that was bad.

It was definitely not well-timed, maybe if it was a couple of months in the future and projects he was working on had come to a close it would be okay.

But right now… just not good timing and using his father as a shield to keep Michael back out of the impact zone would have to suffice.

********************************

He’s known about his dads obsession with aliens since he was a kid growing up in Roswell. It was kind of hard to miss what with the lectures and the pictures and the top secret bunker that he and his brothers weren’t supposed to know about.

When they were kids they used to sneak down there; back when dad still had a key code lock on the bunker that was their moms birthday. He’s upgraded it since then, some sort of handprint lock, which he’s sure he could get around if he wanted to see what his dad has managed to add.

He doesn’t need to do that, mostly because he has Nasy and Nasy is 100 times better at deciphering the alien shit then his dad who doesn’t have first-hand knowledge of aliens and their crash, and is not an _actual fucking alien_.

********************************

The phone has already rung through once, Alex had let it go to voice mail because he honestly doesn’t want to talk to anyone.

And the person calling from his particular number only calls when he needs something, at the moment Alex has nothing to offer and likely won’t until they sign off that he’s mentally fit to take back up his mantle.

He rubs at his knee, he’s already got the prosthetic off, he’s not planning on going anywhere regardless of how many texts he gets from Liz and Maria demanding that he come out and socialize. He’s not up to socializing, he hasn’t managed to get his game face back on and both of them know him well enough that they’re going to be able to take one look at him and know that something is going on.

The phone stops ringing, then starts right back up again. He’s not sure how he manages it but the ring has managed to take on an insistent ‘you will pick me up’ vibe to it.

“You never call unless you need something,” Alex finally says.

“Are you screening my calls now?” the voice at the other end demands.

Sergeant Eric Canvers was probably one of three people that Alex would answer the phone for at the moment, plus Canvers had been in Afghanistan when it all went to shit. Though he had no reason to be calling Alex right now since their little team had been split up while Alex finished recuperating.

“Does that ever work? I need to know if does and I’m just not letting it go long enough.”

“No, that doesn’t work, because I know where you live… though not where you live in Roswell… are you not staying with your dad anymore?”

“You’ve met my dad.” He leaves it at that.

“Nasy is driving me nuts, when are you coming back so you can take over wrangling him?”

“I like how you think I have any control over him,” Alex laughs.

“You have more control over him than anyone else, at the very least he acts like you have some sort of control over him and right now he’s just an annoyance.”

“I have some doctors’ appointments next week; probably going to get a new prosthetic out of those. Then I have to meet with the psych people so they can decide whether or not I’ve gone nuts since the last time I met with them.”

“They sent you home to your dad, are they trying to drive you nuts?”

“You would think so, but I’m pretty sure they’re just following some standard practice I’m not aware of.”

********************************

He makes it a point to go back out to the ranch each day, his dad pushed the seizure of the property for a reason other then what he’s put on paper and Alex is 98% sure he knows why.

He also knows that his dad hasn’t found anything either, which probably hasn’t helped his mood any, Alex doesn’t have to deal with him on a daily basis so he kind of doesn’t care.

But his dad had been searching there for a reason and Alex doesn’t give up as easily. Plus he has Nasy insisting in e-mails that Alex reads but doesn’t respond to that there is something there to find.

They still haven’t found anything yet, he doesn’t have his own little group of 8 (plus Nasy) back yet as they wait for doctors and psychiatrists to sign off on Alex going back into the thick of things, so he requested through his own channels a couple of airman to keep guard and intermittently search the property.

It would help if he could tell them what to search for but they don’t have clearance for _that_ , plus Alex being in the state of not having his actual job at the moment means he can’t file the paperwork that would give him the ability to request the clearance.

Of course if he had that job back he could just have his little team back and it would be a moot point.

“It’s looking a little bare out here, your dad pull everyone back to base?” Kyle asks, Alex isn’t sure why he’s made the trek out to the ranch but he’s fairly confident he could put money on Liz and Maria pushing Kyle to find out why Alex is avoiding them and easily win.

“He didn’t find what he was looking for so he’s moved onto other sites,” Alex says, he sips at the coffee Kyle had brought even though he really doesn’t want a coffee, it’s way too warm at the moment.

“How’s he dealing with the fact that you outrank him?” Kyle jerks his head towards the bars that Alex wears. He thinks it might be the first time Kyle’s noticed them.

“I’m pretty sure he’s managed to convince himself that they’re not actually bars and that they’re really stripes or something.”

Kyle stands there for a minute, awkwardly shifting on his feet. Alex can tell he wants to say something and he’s equally sure _he_ probably doesn’t want to hear it.

“Just say it man,” he finally says when Kyle’s shifting is starting to get on his nerves.

“Michael and Maria…” Kyle starts and stops, Alex’s stomach drops, not where he’d thought the conversation would be going, just as likely to fucking ruin him.

It still takes him a minute, as he clears his throat from where his heart has managed to climb up into it trying to choke him. And it shouldn’t _surprise_ him, Maria is where Michael went when things went all crazy on them on in high school, but it still does.

Because just like back then Michael _absolutely_ knows that he and Maria are friends, why couldn’t he choose any _other_ woman in town. Not the one who is closer to him then his own brothers.

“Good for them,” he finally manages to choke out, his voice sounds strange to his own ears so he doesn’t look over to where Kyle is probably raising his eyebrows at him in disbelief.

The girls don’t know, once he’d kept the secret he could never figure out how to tell them the secret and then it had been over and it hadn’t seemed to matter.

Just one more thing that he couldn’t have, just one more person that his dad could use against him.

The only reason Kyle knows is because he walked in on them once, Michael doesn’t know Kyle knows and once things ended between them Alex had sworn Kyle to secrecy.

“You don't mean that,” Kyle finally says.

“Let me have my truths no matter how false they are,” he says softly, he glances over at Kyle who just looks sad on his behalf, manages a small smile and hobbles away.

 

******************************************************************************

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

**Unseen Flight 2/?**

There’s no alcohol of any type in his house, it wasn’t a conscious decision, and he doesn’t regret it except at times where he’s trying not to think about Michael and Maria in bed together.

Then he really wishes he hadn’t listened to both his therapists.

So instead of getting good and drunk he makes himself a sandwich and sets himself in front of his laptop to go through e-mails and try not to beg someone to let him get back to work already.

He’s only just started, Canvers e-mails can be lengthy with the first half being complaints about how much of a pain in the ass Nasy is being and then following up the complaining with actual news that Alex wants to hear.

The knock at the door is not unexpected, he figured Kyle would be back to try and get him to talk about his feelings again. Instead it’s Maria looking all sorts of pissed off, Liz sort of hovering over her shoulder with no sort of look that Alex can decipher on her face.

“You told Kyle and you didn’t tell us?” Maria snaps at him and Liz puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Maria we talked about this,” she starts.

“I never agreed to not be pissed off, and you told _Kyle_?”

Alex sighs and opens the door further to let them in, better to let them get all their rage out and then send them on their way.

“I never told Kyle anything, he walked in on us once,” Alex says, he gestures towards the couch, eases himself down in a chair so he can stretch his legs out.

“But still,” Maria starts, she’s vibrating with her anger. “We’re your best friends, you’re supposed to tell us things like this, so when the guy you’re crazy about comes sniffing about I can hit him over the head with a frying pan and tell him to keep his dick in his pants until you guys figure things out.”

“I never blamed you,” he says quietly. It had hurt, it still hurts, but Maria had done nothing wrong back then or even now, because she can’t be held to the same standard as Michael when she doesn’t have same knowledge as Michael.

“You left town right after graduation, you didn’t come home during one actual break from school, you only sent e-mails with the vaguest of information,” Maria ticks off her fingers. “I should have been able to figure it out from the context clues alone.”

“Did Max and Isobel know?” Liz asks, she’s been noticeably quiet, Alex hasn’t been paying a huge amount of attention to her since he’s been in town, too distracted by the ranch, his dad and Michael. But looking at Liz with her wide sad eyes, he knows he needs to figure out how to spend a little more time focused on the girls.

“No, not back then and I don’t think Michael would tell them now regardless,” he should have just let Michael go, let him tell Isobel and get things out in the open.

He shouldn’t listen to his father.

There’s a lot of things he shouldn’t do, they’re evenly tied with the things he wished he could.

 

********************************

 

The girls stay, Maria curled up on one side of his bed, Liz the other.

Maria and he will need to talk some more eventually, without Liz there to referee if things go horribly wrong. They need to about Michael and things.

Alex wants to say that he could give his blessing, let Maria be happy with Michael if that's what they want.

He can’t though, and now that Maria knows that the magical kiss in the museum was with Michael, that he was the guy that Alex would have thrown every dream his father ever had or ever would have for him away for…

Well she’s not going to let him.

He wishes he could explain, wishes he could tell her why anything with Michael right now would be a horrible idea. But he can’t even get appropriate clearance for the six airman the General let him have, he would never get any sort of approval to read Liz or Maria or even Kyle (who is probably already read in on some level by his father) in on what exactly is going on at the ranch.

He wouldn’t even broach the topic of Michael, his arrest record alone means that Alex would never get to tell him anything of substance.

 

********************************

 

He somehow manages to get out of the center of the bed without waking either of the girls or maiming himself which he counts as a win.

A bigger win when he manages a shower, getting dressed and making himself a cup of coffee that he takes out onto the porch all without either one of them stirring an inch.

He’d make himself a congratulatory bagel but he’s fairly sure that food will actually penetrate whatever sleep fog they’re both in and he’s not ready for more conversation centered around Michael.

He hears the crunch of the gravel under tires and pulls his crutch closer. He’s not expecting anyone else, Michael doesn’t know where he is. Max and Isobel have no reason really to seek him out.

And his dad is actively avoiding him for some reason which he’s sure he’ll have to deal with at some point but at the moment he’s relishing the silence.

Process of elimination leaves only Kyle and that is exactly who comes around the corner.

Looking half sheepish and Alex just rolls his eyes at him.

“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” he says, waving towards the front door.

He doesn’t blame Kyle, it really wasn’t a secret that Kyle should have had to even keep. He should have told the girls years ago, it’s mostly on him that he didn’t.

He still wants to know what the context of the conversation that led Kyle to reveal things was. He can’t imagine it came up as part of idle conversation. Not when it never has in the past.

 

********************************

 

“You’re almost out of creamer,” Kyle says when he sits down in the chair next to his. They look out at the forest, lots of trees. It’s very quiet and peaceful. Nothing like his dads house right in the middle of things.

“The girls will have to make do with milk then,” Alex shrugs.

They sit there in silence for a minute, Alex doesn’t really have anything to say, if the girls hadn’t stayed he likely still be in bed trying to fake sleep as a way to make time go faster. But Maria is a pillow hog and Liz is a blanket hog and it just made more sense to get up and start moving around even though it’s Saturday and he has absolutely nowhere to be.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Kyle says finally, “I actually didn’t say anything.”

“You know Maria is sensitive,” Alex says, he doesn’t utter the words psychic out loud because as much as he’s working with an actual alien, as much as he’s seen some freaky shit working with that actual alien including the incident that led to him losing his fucking leg… he doesn’t want to put a bullseye of any sort on Maria’s back.

“I know man, I didn’t say anything though, I mean I wasn’t even part of their conversation, it was just Maria telling Liz that she was going to meet up with Michael later and there was some eye stuff and I think I sighed or something and then Maria looked at me and she did that narrow eye glare thing and,” Kyle waves his hand in the air. Alex wonders how much caffeine the man has actually already drank today and whether he should take his cup away.

“She punched Michael,” Liz says from the doorway, she looks rumpled and still tired.

“It was very gratifying,” Maria says, she has a cup of coffee in her hand, Liz pulls one of the other chairs over and sinks into it, Maria perching on the arm. “I mean what the hell, he’s known we were friends since like ever, why would he think it would be okay to fuck around with me when he’s also fucking around with you?”

“I’m pretty sure he was only doing that when we were broke up, or not together, whatever,” Alex says, “And I’m not defending him, I’m just saying there was no cheating happening.”

Maria just looks at him and he stares back.

“If he’s going to be happy with you then that’s a good thing and I’m happy _for_ you.”

Maria rolls her eyes at him and moves from the arm of Liz’s chair to perch next to him on his, leaning into his shoulder, “no you’re not, and it hurts a little bit that you think _I_ would be okay with it knowing what I know now.”

“Maria…”

“He’s your guy, the one that you would have defied your father for, the one you were going to stay in Roswell for because he wouldn’t or couldn’t leave.”

“Michael would have told everyone back then,” he says quietly, “I was the one who made him keep it a secret.”

“Alex…”

“You remember the home he was back in then? During senior year, that shitty family that used him for a punching back more times than not, I couldn’t make it worse for him. And my dad,” he laughs harshly, “if I’d told my dad back then that I was gay, that I was dating him? My dad is career military, from a long line of career military men and I would have put a fucking bullseye on Michael’s back and my dad would have wasted no time in taking the shot.”

“We’re not kids anymore, Alex,” Kyle says, he’s been so quiet that Alex actually startles at the sound of his voice, of the reminder that it’s not just him and Maria sitting on the porch.

That Kyle is right there, and Liz is right there, her bare feet resting on Kyle’s knee.

“We’re adults now, we can make our own life choices now, no matter how shitty they might be,” Liz says.

“The choices I make don’t just impact me anymore, I’ve got other people besides Michael and you guys to worry about.”  


******************************************************************************

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Unseen Flight 3/?**

 

They don’t leave him alone all weekend, which would be frustrating, but is also strangely reminiscent of high school and the three of them, with Kyle periodically tagging along all living in each other’s pockets. He remembers spending as much time at Maria’s kitchen table for breakfast as he did at Liz’s or his own.

He spent more time at their houses then he did at home the year that his mom left and his dad tried alcoholism on for a while.

Monday morning he comes out in his uniform and has to deal with their wolf whistles and leering eyes, Kyle had the overnight shift at the hospital so at least it's just the two of them.

"So plans for the day?" he asks as he pours coffee into his travel mug, patting his pocket for his ID and car keys.

"I told my dad I'd work with him today," Liz says, her face makes that expression that means she's not happy about the decision but still hasn't, after all these years, figured out a way to say no to her father's earnest face.

"Bar, got inventory to do and probably some orders," Maria shrugs. "Dinner at the Crashdown tonight?"

"We'll see what the days brings," Alex says, he tries not to make plans, if things go to shit then he doesn’t have to call and cancel them.

 

********************************

 

He takes his laptop with him out to the ranch. Technically he’s not supposed to be working at all while he’s wading through the seemingly never ending cycle of doctors’ appointments and psych appointments.

But his chain of command also knows that he’s not going to just sit idly by and wait for his next set of appointments, that’s a surefire way to fail the next psych visit.

He sits in the back of his jeep and sorts through e-mails. Nasy has sent more coordinates for him to check, he makes note of them and sends it off to be eliminated by whichever airman is closest.

Canver’s e-mail is full of complaints about Nasy, complaints about boredom, just general complaints that Alex can’t do anything about. Whither’s e-mail is much of the same, as is McDonald’s though McDonald’s lacks the Nasy complaints and really pushes the ‘we’re really fucking bored when are you coming home?’ complaints instead.

He composes a group e-mail, Cc’s Nasy, BCc’s the General and reminds them that he’s technically still on Medical and can’t do anything about their boredom and if they really want him to he can shoot off some e-mails to see if anyone has some openings for guys (and gals, can’t forget Perkin’s) that need something to keep them busy while they play the waiting game with Medical.

He’s just finished attaching his signature and sending it off when he sees Kyle’s vehicle driving up the road.

“Am I on suicide watch or something? Cause I’m fine you know,” he asks when Kyle climbs out, balancing a bottle of water on top of a takeout container from the Crashdown.

“Liz said you didn’t take anything with you for lunch so she sent me out with food,” Kyle says, handing everything over.

“Did you have lunch with Liz? Are you two, you know…?”

Kyle laughs, it sounds a little bitter, way more harsh then Alex was expecting. “I worked the overnight, I ate breakfast there and then Liz asked me to stop back at lunch time to bring you food.”

“Do you need to talk about things?” he asks. He can offer an ear while he eats, his own love life is a complete trainwreck that doesn’t look to be clearing up any time soon so he’s probably not the best person to be offering advice but…

“No, we said we were going to keep it casual, no strings, and we’re going to keep it casual, no strings.” Kyle says it firmly, “plus she’s got some thing going for Max of all people.”

“Isn’t he dating his partner?” he could have sworn he saw them together, they’d at least looked cozy enough that it looked like a date.

“I think so,” Kyle shrugs, “who really knows with this town.”

His phone vibrates against his leg with an incoming text so he’s saved from having to come up with some sort of pithy reply.

_Canvers: Really? If you start trying to send us off to other teams we’re going to think you don't love us anymore._

_Canvers: Nasy wants to know if you’ve searched the new coordinates he sent you yet?_

He doesn’t reply because Canvers doesn’t really expect one.

“Tell Liz thanks for lunch,” he says, he closes up the container and sets it to the side, reaches for his crutch and slides out of the jeep.

“You barely even ate it, if Liz asks I’m not lying for you,” Kyle says, Alex doesn’t get a chance to respond before one of the airman appears right in front of him, out of breath and managing the salute that Alex has already told them they don’t need to do out here in the middle of nowhere, he just barely responds to it before the kid doubles over gasping.

“Jesus are you okay? You know you shouldn’t be running like that in this heat,” Kyle says reaching out hands to offer assistance.

“Carmichael found something,” the kid wheezes, he manages to straighten back up and Alex passes him the bottle of water that Kyle had brought with his lunch.

“He said to come get you,” Alex looks at him and the kid (Waterstone, A1C his brain helpfully fills in) looks equal measures excited and ready to piss himself.

Alex remembers that feeling, the first time he saw something that Nasy had directed them towards that he couldn’t find a way to explain.

“From that last set of coordinates?” Alex asks, he touches his pocket to verify his phone is in there, if it’s actually what Nasy insists it’s going to be he’ll need it.

“Yes sir.”

Alex starts off, he could move faster without the crutch but he also wouldn’t be able to make it back and having to send one of the airman for the jeep to come pick his ass up would be humiliating.

“Kyle, stay,” he says when Kyle makes a motion like he’s going to follow. “Waterstone stay with him.”

“Yes sir.”

It’s a trek out to where Carmichael is staring at the ground, just staring with big eyes that hold a sheen of stunned disbelief, he probably should have brought the jeep out with him. The trek out there had given him enough time to gather his thoughts though, because if they’ve found what Nasy was expecting them to find?

He doesn’t have enough men to guard it, not while he waits for Medical to sign off.

“Sir?” Carmichael looks at him.

“Flag it,” Alex says, “And then cover it back up.”

“Yes sir,” he gets in response, even though the tone indicates that Carmichael doesn’t have the first clue why they would do that. “Shouldn’t we call the Sergeant? And tell him we found something?”

“No,” he looks at Carmichael, looks at where there are two other airman slowly meandering the way over to them. “No, we’re dark from now until we get reinforcements here to secure the area. Do you know that that means?”

None of them have clearance, Alex _needs_ people here with clearance, he needs people that he trusts to have his back, knows how they’ll react given the situation.

“No communication with anyone outside the immediate area,” Carmichael says, he looks at his fellow airman, looks back at Alex, “Do you trust us to turn off our phones or should we hand them over?”

“I trust you to turn them off, if you don’t trust yourselves to _keep_ them off until you’re told to turn them back on then tell me now.”

“We’re good sir,” one of the others says.

Alex nods, “flag it, cover it, someone stays near the flag at all times. Understood?”

He gets soft but firm ‘yes sirs’. They’re all kids, some of them are barely older then he was the first time he met Nasy.

He nods at them and turns on his heel, phone coming out of his pocket. The number is in speed dial, he’s been saving it for when he was really ready to lose his mind and needed someone to push medical to make decisions.

“We found it,” he says, he doesn’t even let the General speak first, doesn’t even wait for the Hello. They don’t have a huge amount of time and Roswell is _not_ that big where someone isn’t going to notice that no one is coming in from the ranch.

There’s silence on the other end, and then a slow, gruff, “You’re sure?”

“Yes sir, I need my team here. Like today here and not in six months when medical decides I’m fit for duty again.”

The General is silent on the other, he can hear the rustling of paper, the General is old school in some of the best and worst ways.

“I can have Canvers, Whithers, McDonald and Barrows there within 12 hours, do you want Nasy as well or do you want him to come with Perkins, Daniels, Farrell and Sullivan? They had some training requirements to meet that went past due.”

“Send Nasy with Canvers, he’ll be with that group whether I want him to be or not.”

“Can you secure the area for 12 hours?”

“I wouldn't say no to some military police, or some weapons. We’re dark as soon as I get off the phone.”

“I’ve got clearances in process for the six I slid you, I’ll get you two MP’s to guard the road in and out but if I try and pull any more it’ll draw notice you’re not going to want.”

“Yes sir,” he can see Kyle standing there with Waterstone. “I’ll talk to you in 12 hours.”

The General hangs up, probably to bark out orders and get his people moving in his direction. Alex thumbs his phone off and then slides it into airplane mode and then the turns the whole thing off just in case.

“Kyle, I need you to leave,” he says when he makes his way over to them.

“Are you okay? You look a little…” Kyle waves at his face.

“Sorry, adrenaline, but I need you to go before the MP’s get here,” he really doesn't want to have to explain to anyone why he had to have Kyle dragged from the ranch by military police.

He also needs Maria and Liz to not try and show up. “And tell Maria and Liz that dinner tonight is a no go. I’ll talk to them tomorrow.”

“Is there something going on?” Kyle asks, his face takes on a ‘I don’t like this at fucking all’ look that Alex remembers vividly from high school.

“Yes, but I can’t share it right now. Tell Maria and Liz I’ll _talk to them tomorrow_ , tell them to _not_ come out here.”

“Okay, but you know they’re not going to like it.”

“I’m perfectly aware and I’ll hear all about it, from them, tomorrow.”

Kyle sighs at him like Alex is making his life difficult.

Which he’s really not, he’s trying to make sure everyone stays alive enough to keep bitching at him about his questionable life choices.  


********************************

 

The first hour is the easiest, because they have things to do.

First up, rearrange the locations of the jeeps, circling them around the flagged spot. All facing out so if something happens they can be easily driven away. It’s a familiar activity that allows for a familiar headspace for Alex to fall into.

This is his job, he knows how to do his job.

Hour 2 the military police the General pulled for him show up with a case of weapons and badges that Alex instructs the airman to keep visible at all times. The General had to have already pushed clearance requests through if he had these ready, because he dots all ‘i’s’ and crosses all ‘t’s’.

Hour 3 the airman start to feel the effects of not having their phones active and buzzing in their pockets with incoming notifications.

“I have games that don’t connect to cell or wi-fi,” Waterstone tries, it’s a half-hearted attempt like he knows that Alex is going to say no but he still feels the need to try.

Hour 5 is when Alex’s leg starts to ache, he should have already taken the prosthetic off, his doctor is going to be pissed as hell at his next visit. He’s not sure he could run if the need arose, though he makes a point of standing up and walking around just to keep moving.

“There’s someone watching us,” Carmichael says.

“Let me know if they try to move closer and I’ll have the MP’s grab him,” he’s pretty sure it’s Michael, but in reality it could be any number of other people.

It could be his dad, but he’s pretty sure his dad will take the main road in and then get pissed off when the guards stop him. He gets loud when he gets mad, Alex will probably be able to hear him from where the MP’s have set up their spot.

Thankfully he won’t have to actually deal with him, not at the moment anyway, because he _knows_ his dads clearance isn’t high enough to let him back on the ranch when Alex has it locked down.

He’d made sure to check that first thing when he got to Roswell and Nasy started sending him coordinates that led him to the same ranch his dad had men trying to confiscate. That very last thing he needed was his dad finding whatever theoretical alien technology that Nasy had him searching for before Alex managed to find it.

Hours 6-9 are boredom, he wishes he’d thought to pack some cards, his airman are taking turns patrolling trying to stay awake because it’s dark now.

He’d turn on the lights of the jeeps but he doesn’t want to run them out of gas.

The lights of an incoming vehicle has his gun in hand and him scrambling out of the jeep without the crutch.

“Sir?” from Carmichael who stations himself on his left, he leaves the door open, using it as both a shield and a way to keep himself standing upright.

“Wait,” he says, though he keeps his weapon up. He can see the others taking positions around them, using the jeeps as cover.

In the dark he can barely make out the vehicle, but he recognizes the driver about two seconds before the vehicle comes to a stop.

“I brought food,” Canvers says, “and a tent and some cots are on the way once McDonald finishes clearing out the inventory from the sporting goods store we passed.”

“And he brought me too,” Nasy says, pushing past where Canvers is handing food off to Waterstone and James. “Show me, show me, show me.”

Barrows loops an arm over Nasy’s shoulders and pulls him back. “Let them eat first man, then we’ll take a look.”

Alex looks at Nasy who is practically bouncing in place in his excitement to see his plans come to fruition, at where Canvers is rolling his eyes and Barrows is trying to keep Nasy from launching himself at Alex.

“You guys made really good time,” he finally says.

“You’ve had road trips with Nasy before, tell me you wouldn’t have figured out how to make those trips 70% shorter when at all possible.”

And there’s really nothing Alex can say to dispute that fact.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I missed you guys.”

“You’re only saying that because I brought food.”

 

********************************

 

Food distracts everyone, not including Nasy for long enough that McDonald and Whithers make it to them with the tents and cots. His leg is _not_ going to like this.

Then there’s getting the tents and everything set up and by the time they’re finished with that task his little group of new airmen are exhausted enough that even though they know they’re basically being sent to bed so the grownups can talk they don’t say a word.

Alex still waits until they’re all safely in the tent before he leads Nasy over to the marked spot.

“We have shovels,” he says when Nasy makes like he’s going to dig with his bare hands. Nasy makes a noise that sounds like Alex is doing everything just to annoy him. Barrows just nudges out of him out of the way and it’s dark so no one can see his eye roll but Alex knows all these guys well enough that he can visualize it.

“How far down boss?” he asks.

“Not too far, I just had them cover it so it wasn’t visible to the naked eye.”

It takes Barrows a minute or so to hit it and he can see Nasy jump at the sound of the shovel hitting something hard. He moves fast, shoving Barrows and his shovel away, going to his knees and moving dirt with his hands until he touches it.

“Jesus,” Canvers mutters, and Alex concurs. It never feels really _real_ when they find something alien. It always feels like a dream, this time especially because he knows _exactly_ what Nasy had him searching for.

Nasy looks up at them and he’s absolutely beaming, Alex doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Nasy this happy, ever, in the entire time he’s known him.

“My ship,” he whispers. “You found my ship.”

 

 

******************************************************************************

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

**Unseen Flight 4/?**

The sound of clacking keys wakes him up, he hadn’t thought he’d actually fallen asleep but apparently he had.

“Did you break into my laptop?” he asks as he pushes himself into a sitting position. His leg is on fire, he totally doesn’t have any pills with him and no way to make any coffee.

It’s probably a beautiful sunrise to anyone who has gotten more than 3 hours of sleep.

“The General told me to bring mine and he’d copy me on anything he sent you that was time sensitive,” Canvers says, he’s sitting in the passenger seat, laptop balanced on his thighs.

“How far did Nasy get last night?” Alex asks.

“He’s got it all mapped out, I sent the updated measurements to the General and the Engineers.”

“Is the size that different from what Nasy had originally told us?”

“No, they just wanted to confirm exact measurements before they sent us the building, it should be here by end of today and barring issues Nasy thinks he can have it ready for transport in 48 hours,” Canvers says, he twists in the seat to study Alex. “You look like shit, have you been resting any or just pushing it?”

“Jesus, and to think I actually missed you assholes.”

“That’s because we’re just that awesome; your dad raised a fuss about an hour ago with the guards. I’m surprised you didn’t hear him.”

“I’ll call the General, maybe he’ll be able to call some favors in and get him off our back,” Alex looks out the window at where Nasy is chattering away at Whithers, whatever he’s telling him is taking a lot of hand motions and movement. It’s making Alex tired just watching.

“Tell Nasy to not dig anything up until the building gets here, no need to invite trouble if we don’ t have to,” Alex says, he pulls his phone out of his pocket, thumbs it on and sits back to wait for it to come up. “And we need to find someplace secure to move it to when Nasy has it out of the ground.”

“Already looking, I’d thought maybe Walker Air Force Base, it’s supposed to be abandoned, should be a building there we can retrofit with our security.”

“Once the building gets here take McDonald and see, we’ll try and keep Nasy on a 48 hour timeframe so that means moving fast.”

He needs to go into town, make sure Liz and Maria know he’s okay, and not to try and come out to the ranch. He’ll have to call Kyle and reiterate that fact as well.

He wonders how much it would take to con one of them into calling Michael and getting him to back off, the last thing he wants is for him to get scooped up in a patrol and Alex _still_ not be able to tell him anything.

It’s one of the worst things about his job, one of the reasons he hoped to never have to come into Roswell.

For every truth he tells someone there’s a part of that truth that he has to omit which then makes it a half truth and a lie.

He doesn’t like lying to the people he loves, and he knows he’s going to be doing an awful lot of omitting the truth to those people for the near future.

 

********************************

 

He has Barrows take him into town, leaving a highly disgruntled Canvers in charge of corralling Nasy while he’s gone.

“How’s the leg?” Barrows asks, he has a quiet demeanor about him but he’s almost as bad a mother hen as Canvers is.

As Nasy will be once the shine of having found his ship wears off.

“It hurts like a motherfucker,” Alex says, he lies to so many other people, he doesn’t lie to his team. They’re the only people that know just about everything that he has to deal with. Because they’re dealing with it as well.

It’s no wonder that they’re single, every single one of them. He thinks Barrows’ last relationship lasted a record 42 days before the last deployment and everything went to shit.

“I’m supposed to take you to the hospital when we’re done checking in with your friends, so you can have it checked out,” Alex opens his mouth to offer up one of a half dozen reasons why that would be a bad idea, “Canvers already called it in to the General.”

“You know I outrank you, right? Both of you?” Alex says.

“Yep, but Canvers was worried about your color this morning and even managed to distract Nasy long enough that now Nasy is worried too.”

“Jesus, it’s like having 9 mothers,” he mutters.

“It’s not that long ago that we were watching you bleed out in the middle of a desert,” Barrows reminds him, he rubs at the scar on his arm that he got during the same incident that cost Alex his leg.

None of them were uninjured, some of their injuries are just more visible then others.

 

********************************

 

Liz leaps at him the minute he walks through the door of the Crashdown, thankfully Barrows is standing there and keeps them from collapsing onto the floor since Alex is leaning more heavily on the crutch then he would probably normally be.

“Sorry,” Liz says, she’s talking to Barrows not him though.

“It’s not even been 24 hours,” Alex says, Liz smacks him upside the head.

“When Kyle comes back and tells me not only did you not eat your lunch but that you kicked him off the ranch and told him to tell us to not try and come out,” Liz bullies him into a seat at the counter. “We thought maybe you found some sort of hazardous waste dumping site or something.”

She looks at him with narrowed eyes, “you’ll eat the special and like it.”

“At this point I’ll eat stale bread and like it,” Alex says.

“Didn’t really have a way to heat up any leftovers or anything,” Barrows says helpfully. Though honestly there wasn’t much in the way of leftovers to be had so it’s not like they really tried.

“I recognize you from last night, you were here ten minutes from closing to order a bunch of take-out meals,” Liz says suddenly. “You should have said they were for Alex, I wouldn’t have given you such a hard time.”

“Ms. Ortecho your hard time wouldn’t even come close to some of the stuff we have to put up with on a daily basis,” Alex narrows his eyes at him, “not you boss, but you know all the other bureaucracy that we get to deal with when you’re not around.”

“You know my name,” Liz stops suddenly. “How do you know my name?”

“Been stationed with the Captain for a long time, he has pictures of you and Ms DeLuca, couple of others,” Barrows has his phone out, tapping away at buttons. “Perkins wants to know if she can leave the refresher course from hell she’s stuck in and bring the boys with her, she’s bored and says it’s not fair.”

“Does she want to take the whole course over again in a couple of weeks when this is all over? Because if she skips out it’ll be less a refresher and more a take the whole thing over again because she lost her certification.”

Barrows snorts, “I think she’d be okay with that as long as she didn’t miss anything.”

“Tell her nothing is happening and we’ll try and keep anything _interesting_ from happening until they get here.”

He’s not going to hold his breath, but law of averages says they should be in for some mind numbing boredom coming at them soon.

 

********************************

 

Kyle is frowning at the stump of his leg, Alex isn’t looking at it because even he doesn’t need to see it to know that its red and swollen, he can _feel_ that it’s red and swollen because he swears it’s throbbing in time with his heartbeat.

“If I tell you to stay off your feet for a couple of days would you actually do it?” he asks, he’s ghosting his hands over the stump.

“Depends if you want me to lie to you or not,” Alex says, “I can hear your eyes rolling over there Sergeant Barrows.”

“I would never do that sir,” Barrows says earnestly.

“I’ve got stuff going on, the most I can commit to is not using the prosthetic and crutches in the meantime.”

Kyle just looks at him, narrowed eyes probably trying to figure out if he can admit him without Alex kicking up a fuss.

“It’s the best I can do for now.”

 

********************************

 

Barrows is carrying his prosthetic in a bag and his arm crutch, while Alex laments not convincing Barrows to go back to the cabin to get his crutches from before the prosthetic and arm crutch. The new ones aren’t padded or worn in or anything. He hates them.

“We’ll find you a nice cushy chair to sit in and supervise, sir,” Barrows is saying when Michael appears right in front of them.

He looks slightly disheveled and dusty, likely from spending the night observing the ranch from a distance far enough away that he wouldn’t get shooed away by a patrol, or picked up by a different one.

He’s studying Alex in that way he has where he’s cataloging everything wrong with him; Alex quirks his eyebrow at him and he can see the exact second Michael notices the set of crutches under Alex’s arms, and Barrows to his left holding the bag and his arm crutch and the uniform he's wearing.

“What’s wrong with your leg?”

“Nothing, just on the prosthetic for too long, only supposed to wear it for twelve hours at a time or so.”

“Actually I think it was only supposed to be more like eight,” Barrows clears his throat next to him, Alex shoots him a glare, “well that’s what Canvers said and he was there when you were getting fitted for it originally so… I’m just going to go stand over there by the desk and wait for you.”

“What do you want Guerin?” It’s a safety net, not using Michael’s _actual_ name in conversation keeps a barrier up between them, keeps things from getting personal.

He _needs_ things not to be personal between them right now.

“Nothing,” Michael says sharply. “I don’t want anything from you.”

It hurts, twists a little like a knife to the gut and he doesn’t know what the expression on his face just did but Barrows looks like he’s going to come physically remove Michael from his presence.

“Don’t go back out to the ranch, patrols will start sweeping a larger radius probably starting this afternoon.”

He doesn’t say he doesn’t want Michael getting caught up in dealing with military police, that shouldn’t be his first priority.

But protecting Michael, protecting Liz and Maria and Kyle and by virtue of being connected to those people the rest of Roswell is his priority.

Even when he doesn’t want it to be.

 

********************************

The trucks are there when they get back to the ranch, the building they’re putting in place to hide the ship from prying eyes is basically a giant shipping container. They’ve done this exact same thing a few times prior to a _much_ smaller degree.

This is certainly the first alien fucking vessel they’ve found.

“We still good for 48 hours?” he asks Nasy.

“I can probably make it quicker, but 48 just to be on the safe side,” Nasy confirms. From the look on his face Alex won’t be able to convince him to leave again until the ship is safely under lock and key.

None of them will be going anywhere for at least 48 hours, he tries not to think of his soft bed just waiting for him to crawl into it.

It’s cots and sleeping bags and sleeping on the floor until they’ve got locks and security measures in place.

“Okay, you’ve used these before so you know how it works?” The lieutenant that is signing the container off isn’t someone they’ve worked with before.

“We’ve used them before, my team should already have key card access. Canvers will give access to our six newbies to get into the outer areas only for the time being.”

“We have a time frame for pickup?” the lieutenant asks, he’s tapping away on his pad, probably confirming delivery.

“48 hours for the building, we should have the crate out sooner,” Alex says, “we’ll schedule a truck to pick up the crate at 46 hours, leave ourselves a little bit of a window just in case.”

“Okay,” the lieutenant hands the pad to him and Alex confirms the time frame. It’s a tight one, not as tight as some of the ones they’ve worked, but they also aren’t in an _actual_ warzone trying to move a cache of alien weapons before the owners of those alien weapons returned and tried to use them on his team.

 

********************************

From the outside the building looks like a giant metal square. Its two pieces that slide together to create a secure pocket of space.

From the inside there’s two layers to the box when it’s secured together, a series of rooms that can be used as sleeping areas, two separate bathrooms and in the direct center accessible only by keycard access is a large open room with no floor.

Alex waits until Canvers leads off their newbie airmen to brief them on what their duties will be, when they disappear from sight he nods to the others and one by one they scan their keycards to access the room. It’s a safety check so they can verify that all the keycards work.

He’s the last one in and when the door closes behind him he can see Nasy with a shovel already in hand by the first marker, he’s vibrating with energy though he waits until Alex nods at him to start digging.

“Let’s try and do better than 46 hours,” he says to Barrows and the Sergeant nods at him. He knows he’s not the only one feeling like they’re hanging out in the wide open waving a giant bullseye around to attract attention.

“Let’s find you a cushy chair to sit in, sir. No digging for you remember.”

 

 

******************************************************************************

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

**Unseen Flight 5/?**

 

He’s been working with Nasy and the others for almost six years, and every time he sees something alien, sees something that can’t _possibly_ be of their world it fills him with wonder.

He’d mostly stopped reaching for his phone to tell Michael about everything he sees after the second year, Michael’s science geek brain would have loved all of this. He’d likely be right down there with Nasy and Barrows digging through dirt and unearthing all sorts of wonderful and awful things.

They get the ship completely unearthed within the first two hours, it glimmers when Nasy touches which is something to behold, and a stark reminder that while Nasy _looks_ as human as any of them he is decidedly _not_ not as human as all of them.

“Do you think it has power?” Whithers asks, they’ll definitely be using the showers later. Even Alex who is sitting in a chair not as far away as the guys want, and who is definitely not participating in the digging out of the ship whatsoever is covered by a thin layer of dust and grime.

Nasy shoots him a look and touches the dome of the ship in such a way that a panel on the top of the dome folds away.

“Jesus Christ,” Canvers mutters, McDonald is crossing himself.

“Hey I have like 80 flight hours logged do you think?” Barrows starts, only to be cut off by Nasy’s, “No, no absolutely not.”

“Does it have enough power to get out of the ground?” Alex asks.

“The panel opened, if there was no power it wouldn’t have been able to. I had it almost completely powered down, just running some auxiliary defense and security programs to keep it from being located by anybody but me,” Nasy drops down through the open space, Alex hears the thud of him hitting the floor of the ship and then a faint, “I’m okay.”

“You guys might want to move,” Alex says, waving Barrows and McDonald away from the unearthed ship and towards him. He gets his crutches under his arms and stands up so they can move a bit further away.

There’s a faint hum and then the ground shakes a bit, Alex has a brief moment where he hopes that it will be contained to just their immediate area and he won’t be explaining away an earthquake or something. And then he’s not thinking at all, because the ship is slowly moving up out of the hole. It takes a moment before they can see Nasy’s face looking entirely too gleeful through what Alex assumes is the alien version of the front window.

The ship is smaller than Alex thought it was going to be, even though he had measurements and he knows exactly what the size of what they were looking for. He’d had a mental picture of a ship similar to the one that was originally found and that was much larger.

This more resembles a fighter jet then a cargo ship.

But it’s smaller, so it means they have plenty of space for Nasy to drift it forward and set it on solid ground.

When he climbs out of the ship, he’s smiling so hard that Alex worries that it might split his face.

“First things first let’s get the hole filled in,” Alex says, he doesn’t want to wait until the end to do that, they’ll run out of time and it will be very obvious to anyone with eyes what they pulled out of the ground.

 

********************************

 

While McDonald, Barrows and Whithers play some convoluted hand game to determine who gets to drive the bobcat and who gets to man the shovels Alex shuts himself, Canvers and Nasy into a way too small for three people room so they can video conference with the General.

Nasy can’t stop smiling and it’s going to get on Alex’s nerves pretty quickly if he doesn’t get more than a three hour catnap in the near future.

“So were we successful gentlemen?” the General appears on screen.

“Yes sir, we’ll send some pictures shortly and we’ll do a video walk around when we have it in a more secure location,” Alex says.

“We have a secure location to move it too?”

“Yes sir,” Canvers leans forwards, “there’s a couple buildings on Walker Air Force Base that will work, our more pressing concern is figuring out a way to move it without driving it directly through town. I’ve got it narrowed down to two routes, but they’re both going to skirt the edge of town.”

“I trust in your judgement to get it safely secured,” the General says, he flips through papers on his desk, Alex wonders what has him so distracted and hopes it’s nothing to do with them and has something to do with one of the other teams out in the field doing similar jobs that they do.

“What are our next steps?” the General asks.

“Once I have the ship secure I can use its tracking software to find my charges,” Nasy leans forward, Alex slides to the left a few inches so Nasy is directly in front of the camera.

“You think they’re still in Roswell?”

Nasy shoots a look at Alex that Alex hopes the General is too distracted to notice.

“Yes, sir, I believe they are still residing in Roswell.”

“Okay, I’ll send some documents over to Captain Manes, if you find them…”

“When I find them,” Nasy interjects, the General raises an eyebrow at him and Nasy flushes.

“When you find them, we’ll offer them the same protection we offered you…”

“We’ll let you know when we have the ship in a more secure facility,” Alex says, the General gives a nod and cuts the feed from his side. Alex really doesn’t want to know what’s going on that they’re not involved in.

“Yes, yes, provided they sign documentation in triplicate and promise to never try and overthrow the government and enslave the human race,” Nasy mutters.

“Nasy,” Canvers sighs.

“Been working with the man for over 20 years and he still acts like he doesn’t trust me.”

“I don’t think the General really trusts anyone,” Alex says.

Nasy grumbles something Alex doesn’t hear under his breath, he shares a look with Canvers who just shrugs at him, as if to tell him your alien your problem. Which is not fair, Canvers actually met Nasy first by three whole days before Alex came on board.

“I’d like to move the pods to the secure location as well,” Nasy says suddenly.

“Why? They’ve been secure enough where they are, why chance moving them?” Alex asks.

“Because they’ve probably been visiting them, and if they notice them gone maybe they’ll…”

“Freak out and you won’t have to worry that your software is like 40 years out of date and has no way to perform an update,” Alex finishes for him. “You still think I knew them somehow.”

Nasy looks at him, the quiet inscrutable look that he means he’s studying the depths of Alex’s soul to figure out what he’s missed.

“You have holes in your memory, not big ones which means they were very systematic about what was removed, but yes, those holes mean that at one point you came into contact with at least one of my charges.”

Alex sighs, this is an old argument that they’ve had numerous times on and off over the years.

And no matter how many times Alex tries to tell him that in high school there was only Liz and Maria, Kyle and Rosa and at the end for the briefest, happiest time there’d been Michael.

And then he’d lost Michael and they’d lost Rosa and he was back down to Liz and Maria with Kyle on the outskirts when he wasn’t being a giant jackass.

He just can’t see how he would miss aliens. You’d think they would stand out.

 

********************************

 

The moving of the ship to the secure building that Canvers has retrofitted with their security measures is almost anti-climactic. He was sure that he was going to have to deal with his father or townspeople or something.

They move it in the middle of the night, taking back roads and goat paths. Nasy doesn’t seem to breathe for the almost 40 minute drive and only really relaxes when they’ve got the ship secured behind doors that will only admit their team and the General if he chooses to leave his comfortable office.

They take jeeps back to the building and Alex sends a text off to the Engineers that they’re ahead of schedule and can come pick up the building at any time.

His dads timing is both awful and fantastic, if he’d been two hours earlier he would have seen them loading the crate on a truck, and now all he sees is McDonald and Whithers loading their gear into their jeep.

“Just breathe sir, he’s got no good reason to be out here,” Canvers says as he pulls them up alongside the other jeep.

He hops out of the jeep, grabbing Alex’s crutches from the back seat and coming around to open the door and hand them off to him. It gives a minute to put his game face on.

His dad always makes him feel like he’s fifteen and never going to be the son his dad wanted. He doesn’t know if that will ever change, but there’s a reason he went the Academy route instead of just straight up enlisting out of high school.

“What’s wrong with your leg?” his dad asks when Alex gets out, the verbal concern takes him aback for a minute but then he really _looks_ at his dad and he can’t see any concern etched into his face, not like he can when he looks at any member of his team.

“Nothing, just on it for too long, so crutches for a bit,” he says. “Can I help you with something?”

He keeps his tone light and non-confrontational. Being confrontational with his dad never got him anything but a fist and ugly sneers.

His dad just stares, eyes narrowed at him and Alex doesn’t squirm, ten years ago, fifteen years ago he would have been spilling everything and anything just for his dad to not look at him like that. But he’s an adult now and his secrets aren’t secrets he can share but with a select few people who have all signed the appropriate documentation and have the appropriate security clearances.

Both things that his dad doesn’t have.

“You found something,” his dad says finally, voice low so as to not be overheard. Alex can still see Barrows stiffen and he makes a hand motion at him to let him handle it.

“False alarm,” Alex says brightly, “thought we’d found something hazardous but apparently just some old containers rusted through and someone thought to bury them instead of disposing them correctly.”

His dad just looks at him, eyes still narrowed. “You found something and I’m going to find out what it is and when I do...”

“You’re going to do what? You don’t have clearance to be out here, I locked this place down and I know who _does_ and _does not_ have clearance to be out here,” Alex says. He’s bone tired all of a sudden, he’s thrilled that they’re almost done, that the ship is secure and he can have Canvers take him home at some point so he can crawl into his nice soft bed and sleep for more than three hours at a time.

He can hear the trucks coming up the road, Engineers coming back to take the building apart and load it up to move it onto the next site or back to a warehouse or wherever it’s needed next.

“We’re done here, you’re welcome to hang out and watch them pack the building up. If you’ve not seen them do it before it’s really something to watch.”

He spins on his heel, and stalks away, he wishes he were doing it with his prosthetic on, but he thinks he manages to make his point.

 

********************************

 

Whithers and Barrows take the first shift at the new building, Nasy gives them a checklist of things to go through and stern instructions to ‘not touch my fucking ship’ before Canvers herds him, McDonald and Alex into a jeep. He drops off McDonald and Nasy at the motel first, then starts towards Alex’s cabin.

“I could have drove myself,” Alex says absently.

“We’ll stop at the hospital in the morning and if you can get a doctor to sign off on it then I’ll have Barrows give you back your prosthetic.”

Alex rolls his eyes and then rolls his shoulders. He’s stiff and cramping from the lack of sleep and the lack of comfortable sleeping aids.

“We should have just let Nasy stay there,” Alex says. “You know he’s going to be calling by 6am to have someone take him back out.”

“I have earplugs and will turn the ringer off on my phone,” Canvers grumbles.

The road leading up to the cabin is dirt and rocks, Alex really wishes Jim had put down some asphalt or run a roller over it a time or ten, it definitely wakes him up though.

Enough that when Canvers pulls up in front of the house Alex can see Michael sitting there on his porch with a beer in his hand.

“Not a word,” Alex says, hoping to cut off the connect the dots that he can _actually_ see happening in Canvers’ head right at that moment.

“Huh,” Canvers says, Alex shoots him a look, “little bit more rough and tumble then I thought you’d go for sir.”

“I don’t even want to know.”

“Well you don’t date, not at all, you never bring anyone to the team family things, not ever. Most of us think you know, horrific breakup. Though Barrows thinks that maybe it’s some creepy cult thing that has something to do with abstinence and purity or something.”

“Did none of you ever think that maybe I just didn’t want to submit someone I was in a relationship with to the chaos that is our team?”

Canvers just raises an eyebrow at him, “I spend a _lot_ of time with you sir, you could probably hide a serious significant other from the others but me, or Barrows? You couldn’t hide that from us. And there’s been no one, not ever, in the entire time I’ve known you. Besides, we’re awesome and you love us.”

Alex sighs.

They all know, though the only person he ever told face to face directly was Canvers. Canvers is his right hand, he needs to be able to trust him, it still took him months to come out and say the words.

Even after DADT was repealed, to tell this man that ‘I’m gay’ could have been the end of his career. Half of him had wondered at the time if he hadn’t been waiting for that to happen.

But Canvers had just looked at him and said ‘okay sir,’ and they’d moved on.

There’d been no betrayal, his father hadn’t jumped out from behind a tree and tried to beat the gay out of him or assaulted the only person he’d ever allowed himself to fall in love with.

These are people that he goes out in the field with, that he trusts with his life and they entrust their lives to him. They live in close quarters for a lot of their time together, which means he knows exactly what kind of porn each one of them watches, knows that Perkins and Barrows have some random hookup that occurs with no rhyme or reason and McDonald’s girlfriend cleared out his apartment during their last deployment leaving him with nothing but a random coffee table and hand towel.

“His name is Michael, he’s genius level smart, don’t say anything about what we actually do around him,” Alex says quickly as Michael apparently gets tired of waiting and comes to his feet.

“You don’t trust him?”

“I trust him with everything, I don’t trust _us_ to be able to protect him.”

 

 

******************************************************************************

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Unseen Flight 6/?**

 

Alex opens the door just as Michael appears right next to it, he doesn’t ask what the hell are you doing there because that’s an argument that he doesn’t really need Canvers witnessing.

“Can you grab his crutches from the back?” Canvers asks, he’s already out of the driver’s side looping Alex’s laptop bag over his shoulder which Alex takes to mean that Canvers is coming in.

Alex can’t place the expression on Michael’s face when he passes him the crutches, though he doesn’t really try either because he’s several hours past the point of exhaustion where he just wants to climb onto a flat surface, _any_ flat surface and just pass out.

There’s no really great way to get out of a vehicle without looking awkward anymore without the prosthetic. He at least manages to not fall flat on his face which he counts as a win.

He doesn’t know what to think when Michael actually leads the way up the porch to the door and then through the door into the cabin.

“I know I locked that door,” Alex says, he hadn’t been tired the morning he left and he knows he locked it as he was shooing Maria and Liz out the door.

Michael raises an eyebrow at him and doesn't say a word.

“Nine am,” Alex says and Canvers nods.

“Daniels, Perkins, Farrell and Sullivan should make it into town about one or so, you want me to send them to Barrows and Whithers, or have them bunk down and start fresh in the morning?”

“Have Farrell and Sullivan go in, Perkins and Daniels can go in with us,” Alex looks at him for a moment. “Or have Barrows pick me up and then we can swing back and get them after the hospital.”

Canvers narrows his eyes at him.

“Nasy is going to have you up at 6 am and you know it,” Alex says, he’s tired of standing, he really just wants a sandwich, a shower and his bed and not necessarily in that order.

“I have ear plugs and a gun.”

“Barrows, 9 am,” Alex says again.

Canvers gets that mulish expression on his face which means he’s going to do whatever he can to prove Alex wrong. But Alex also knows Nasy and the only way Canvers wouldn’t be dragged out of bed was if Alex was staying at the hotel with them.

But he’s not so Canvers is Nasy’s next best way to get back to where they have the ship stored.

“Nasy is as exhausted as the rest of us are, maybe he’ll sleep the whole night,” Canvers says in a hopeful voice.

Alex laughs, “go back to the hotel Sergeant, I’ll see you in the morning.”

Canvers gives him a mock salute that Alex rolls his eyes at and waves him off. The door closes softly behind him.

Which leaves him and Michael standing alone in his living room.

 

********************************

 

“I need to take a shower and then eat something,” Alex says, the silence of the cabin is overwhelming suddenly.

“I can make you a sandwich,” Michael says, his voice is even. “Maria said you didn’t have much in your refrigerator, so Liz went shopping and then sent me out with all the bags.”

“So you’re a delivery service now?” Alex asks.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Michael turns towards the kitchen, “go take a shower Alex, I’ll make you a sandwich.”

“We’re not having sex,” Alex says firmly.

“No, because you’ll likely fall asleep in the middle of it. I don’t need that hanging over my head.”

 

********************************

 

The showers in the building were the two minute timer showers and Alex learned early in his military career on how to get clean in two minutes. But caked in dirt and grime… there’s really no way to scrub all that away in two minutes, the most all of them could do was rinse off.

Of course then they were just putting on the same dirt covered uniforms so it was also an exercise in futility.

He’s become an old hand at showering with just one leg. It had taken him months after getting out of the hospital to really own his new limitations, so as much as he loathes it, he also has a chair in the shower to keep him from crashing to the floor.

The few days they’d managed before his dad managed to worm his way back into Alex’s head he knows Michael was upset about the fact that he always left at some point in the night. He’d never said anything, but Alex knows how to read Michael.

And he could have just pointed out that Michael’s shower wasn’t set up to handle Alex’s disability, but he also knows that if he had voiced the words that Michael would have solved the issue in short order.

It was easier to use it as an excuse in his own head.

Safer as well, because if Alex left in the middle of the night then there was no chance of Alex’s dad catching them together and trying one more time to kill him, to hurt Michael.

“You alive in there?” Michael taps on the door.

“I’m good,” his voice sounds weird to his own ears, he doesn’t know what it sounds like to Michael but it must sound alarming enough that Michael opens the door to the bathroom.

He turns the water off and sits there for a minute, he can hear Michael breathing on the other side of the glass door.

“Can you hand me the towel,” he finally says when it becomes apparent that Michael isn’t going to back out of the bathroom and allow him privacy.

He pats himself dry and uses the handle he’d installed by himself to get himself in a standing position and gets the towel wrapped around his waist.

No sense in flashing Michael even though he’s seen it _all_ before.

“Do you need, uh, help?” Michael finally asks, he turns when Alex pushes the shower door open.

“I’m good,” Alex gets the crutches under his arms, he can tell the exact moment when Michael notices the shower chair and the connections his brain makes. The next time Alex stays in the Airstream Michael is going to have something rigged up in his shower.

And he knows there will be a next time, because there’s _always_ a next time, Michael is the one person that is his weakness.

“You look like you’re ready to pass out,” Michael observes, “go get in bed and I’ll bring a sandwich to you.”

Alex doesn't tell him that he doesn’t eat in bed, doesn’t tell him he can eat at the kitchen table where they can make awkward small talk about everything _except_ for why Michael is there.

“Bottle of water too,” he calls after him and doesn’t ask his reflection what the fuck he’s doing, his reflection looks just as confused as he feels.

 

********************************

 

Michael lounges across the foot of the bed eating his own sandwich and flipping through a hunting magazine that Alex thinks is 30 years out of date.

“I have a security clearance,” Alex says finally, just to rip the bandage off and get to the root of exactly why things can’t work between them until Alex is done with the military or it’s done with him. “Being with you…” he pauses because this is where things went wrong last time, where they’d just fallen apart, because Alex sees criminal activity and waving goodbye to his Top Secret clearance and Michael sees it as a method of survival.

“I know your daddy likes to push the criminal element because I didn’t head off to college like everyone expected and thus have to be doing some side shit in order to keep in gas and stuff,” Michael says slowly, “but he can’t just _make_ me have a criminal record by the power of his mind. You have to actually, you know commit a crime, be arrested and convicted and you know all that.”

Alex stares at him for a minute and doesn’t quite know what to say, and he should know better than to trust every word out of his dads mouth because he knows his dad has a way of twisting even the most innocent of things into something 90% worse than they actually are.

“I’m…” he doesn’t know what to say, does he apologize for listening to his dad? Does he apologize for jumping to a conclusion that he only got to because of his dad whispering in his ear?

Does he tell him that he missed him every second of every day? That sometimes at the beginning it hurt to breathe for how much he missed him.

“You know everything with your dad just made it more and more clear that I really lucked out with not having an actual dad thing,” Michael says.

“Geurin.”

“You can call me Michael you know, we’re all alone in here, the doors are locked,” Michael wraps his hand around the bare skin of ankle and his lips quirk into a soft smile. “Your dad isn’t anywhere near here.”

He collects Alex’s plate to lay on top of his and shifts a bit to put them on the floor, the magazine gets shoved off one side of the bed with far less care.

“Michael,” he murmurs quietly, trying it out, even though he knows he can’t make it common practice.

“Alex,” Michael presses a kiss to his knee, his stomach and then settles on his side next to him, pulling Alex up against his side.

It takes a few long minutes for Alex to relax enough to let his head rest on Michael’s shoulder, to let his arm lay across his chest.

To lay there and just breathe, to let himself touch Michael, to let Michael touch him and let himself believe that they might be able to navigate a relationship this time that won’t end in bloodshed and tears.

“We’re still not having sex,” he mumbles. Michael laughs at him, presses his lips against the top of his head.

“Go to sleep Alex, we’re okay.”

Jesus this man is going to break his heart again, Alex can just feel it in his bones.

 

********************************

 

His phone alarm doesn’t wake him up, the smell of coffee and the fact that he’s alone in bed does. He lays there for a minute, just breathing. Then starts moving, a glance at the clock by his bed shows he has maybe an hour before Barrows will show up to get him.

That gives him enough time to get dressed, figure out which closet he hid his first set of crutches in, drink a cup of coffee and maybe eat something.

Getting dressed is easy enough, he’s got clean uniforms, though he needs to schedule some time to do laundry. He’s get a spare set of boots so he doesn’t need to worry about shining anything just yet.

He gets his pants and boot on, drags his t-shirt over his head and sets his BDU top aside for the moment, he thumbs his phone on and realizes that at some point he’d put it on silence.

There’s one text waiting from Canvers sent at 6:14 am telling him that he has a video conference scheduled with the General and one of the Lieutenants at noon, Alex sends back an OK.

“I was going to bring you coffee,” Michael says from the doorway, Alex turns and sees him leaning there against the doorway watching him. His hair is in disarray and Alex thinks that might be one of his t-shirts. “Maybe breakfast in bed.”

They totally don't have time before Barrows to do anything besides eat, drink some coffee, maybe make some small talk that hopefully doesn't have one of them storming away and angry again.

 

********************************

 

Barrows is prompt, not early and not late. When you tell him to pick you up at 9am he’ll be there right at 9 am.

“You found hope and peace,” Barrows says when Michael lets him into the cabin.

“Hope and peace?” Michael asks.

“Hope and peace,” Alex points to his crutches, the left one is hope, the right one is peace.

“You named your crutches?”

“The Captain didn’t name them, if we’d left it up to him he would have named them death and despair and considering he was going to be using them for a while he didn’t need death and despair helping him walk again.”

Alex rolls his eyes, he’d rolled his eyes back then as well because his mood had been all black and despairing. He’d thought for sure that he was going to get medically discharged, that it was only a matter of time before a psych visit told whoever made those decisions that he was too mentally damaged to continue on.

“Barrows take my laptop out to the car, I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Canvers wants me to remind you that you’ve got a video conference with the General and one of the Lieutenants at noon, he said to also tell you that Nasy did _not_ wake him up this morning at 6am but I’m pretty sure that was because he was already up since the General texted us at 5:30 to get the conference on your schedule.”

“Hospital visit shouldn’t take that long, we’ll be there in enough time,” Alex says, he ignores the wink and knowing smirk on Barrows’ face as he leaves the cabin.

Michael leans against the door after he shuts it and just looks at him.

“We don’t have time for whatever is running through your head, two minutes and he’ll start texting, five and he’ll be back knocking on the door.”

He moves across the room, he has to go out the door anyway and leans into Michael’s space a little, touching their cheeks together. Michael skims his fingers across the side of his face, just barely touching him.

It makes Alex ache for all the moments that could have been that they’ve missed, for moments that still could be because they haven’t happened yet.

It makes him want things that he has no business wanting at the moment. A future and a life and a home that could revolve around this man.

“We don’t have time for that then we _certainly_ don’t have time for whatever’s going through your head either Captain.”

Alex huffs a laugh, “Get out of my way Guerin, you’re going to make me late and Barrows will never let me hear the end of it.”

 

 

 

******************************************************************************

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the awesome feedback, you guys make my heart happy.
> 
> So some notes for this chapter and chapters going forward:
> 
> 1\. We are not delving into the mystery of Rosa, maybe in the sequel if rabid plot bunnies don't derail the train. Though I'm not convinced that Max, Michael or Isobel had anything to do with her death and the deaths of the other two girls. 
> 
> 2\. I'm not about keeping characters apart just for angst sake.
> 
> 3\. Nasy is Nasedo, he is not the Nasedo from the original Roswell, I sort of adopted him and made him my own.
> 
> 4\. This fic will be all from Alex's POV, let me know in comments if there are specific reactions you would like to see to specific events that are happening in the story. They won't be in the main story but I don't mind the ficlet exercise. :D
> 
> Have I mentioned how much I love you guys? I'm just so happy to be writing again and I'm glad you all are enjoying the ride with me.


	7. Chapter 7

**Unseen Flight 7/?**

 

Kyle grudgingly signs off on allowing him to use the prosthetic for “no more than 8 hours at a time, I mean it Alex, you’re going to hurt yourself if you’re not careful.”

“He’s got meetings all afternoon so at least he won’t be moving around on it,” Barrows says.

“Don’t help Sergeant Barrows.”

 

********************************

 

“Captain’s on two feet,” Canvers calls as Alex and Barrows walk into the main entrance to the warehouse, “hide the strippers.”

“Funny,” Alex rolls his eyes, “are we secure?”

“We’ve upgraded all the doors with our scanners, Daniels’ has got some new tech for us to try out on them. We moved those pods of Nasy’s into the main warehouse area, he’s running some diagnostics on them now but he wants to have a sit down with everyone this evening before shift change.”

“You’ve been busy,” Alex says.

“Who needs sleep,” Canvers scoffs.

“ _You_ are not Nasy, so you actually do,” Canvers has this thing he does where he tries to deal with all the day to day petty bullshit so Alex doesn’t have to. Alex has never been able to make him understand that dealing with the day to day petty stuff is relaxing after having to deal with some of the high level bullshit that he wishes he could _actually_ pass off to someone else.

“Who’s acting as my admin today?”

“Sullivan, I think he’s still getting the computer stuff set up for your video conference with the General.”

“Ask Nasy if he thinks he can cover everything in an hour or if he needs more time, and then let everyone know what time to report tonight.”

“Aye aye Captain,” Canvers snaps a salute at him then ruins it by winking.

“Barrows you can head back to motel, get some sleep, I’m sure Canvers will text you all a report time this afternoon sometime.”

“I’d say 2000, if Nasy needs more time for his dog and pony show I’ll let you all know,” Canvers and Barrows start some complicated hand knuckle fist bump thing, Alex leaves them to it and heads back to the office he’d claimed as his before Canvers decided he needed sleep more then he needed a functioning office space.

“Morning sir,” Senior Airman Mark Sullivan is climbing out from underneath his desk when he walks in, he must have snuck out when Alex was talking to Canvers and stole his laptop bag off Barrows because his laptop is already in place on his desk.

“We all set up?”

“Yes sir, got you an extra monitor, all the cool kids at Lackland seem to be using two for some reason, so I thought why not,” Sullivan shrugs his shoulders.

“What’s the rest of my schedule look like after the video call?”

“Nothing, I tried to keep everything off it cause I knew you were going to want to be out in the warehouse with the ship and the pods Nasy brought back,” Sullivan says matter-of-factly.

“Well, you know,” Alex hits the buttons on his laptop to get to his password screen.

“Spaceship, it’s an actually real freaking spaceship,” Sullivan says with a frankly more high pitched tone then Alex was expecting since this is _far_ from the first time they’ve come in contact with alien tech.

Alex shakes his head and writes two names on a post it note, handing it over to Sullivan.

“Run a cursory background on them for me? Nothing that will trigger any alarms that anyone _else_ might have set up against those names, just enough to make sure nothing in their past is going to bite me or us in the ass in the very near future.”

Sullivan glances down at the names, “not military or you’d be going through the General, you planning on reading in some civilians, sir?”

“I don’t know, I just want to have my bases covered if I have to for some reason.”

 

 

********************************

 

The only thing getting Alex through this video conference is the fact that there is an alien ship and three alien pods sitting in his warehouse, and if he makes it through the conference without going crazy he can actually go look at them.

He’d gloat a little but it’s unbecoming, plus he also has Nasy so it’s probably slightly unfair.

“Alright anything else?” the General asks, “No sir,” Alex and First Lieutenant Davies both respond in turn.

The General nods at both of them, makes direct eye contact with Alex for more than five seconds and then leans forward like he’s going to manually disconnect the video connection.

Lieutenant Davies image pops out as he disconnects first and the General leans back in his chair with a self-satisfied look on his face.

“At some point he’s going to figure out that you’re faking him out, sir,” Alex says and the General just grins at him.

“He’s young, by the time he figures it out I’ll be retired and someone else, likely you, will be sitting in this chair faking him out instead,” the General looks at him, “You look tired did you sleep at all when Sergeant Canvers kicked you out?”

“Some, just kind of hard to actually turn the brain off when I’m thinking of all the things that I should be doing here.”

“So update me on your progress.”

“We’ve got the ship secure, it has power still like Nasy insisted it would, he also moved the three pods that his charges were in to the warehouse as well.”

“He thinks they’re still alive?”

“He hopes, I don’t know if he’s got any definitive proof one way or another.”

The General huffs a laugh.

“When I first met the man I thought he was crazy. Aliens from outer space, coming to our planet to escape a civil war that threatened to destroy their entire populace and oh by the way he was a shape shifter who could look like anyone that he wanted provided he spent more than 30 seconds in your presence,” the General looks his age, on top of that he looks more tired than Alex can ever remember seeing him.

“I still didn’t believe him until he showed me the pods, I should have insisted then that he move them somewhere safer, more contained; but I listened to him, it was his technology, he said that if he moved them again before they were ready to open that it would harm the integrity of the pods, that he couldn’t endanger the kids that way. And we still lost them anyway.”

“Nasy says he can find them,” Alex says. “And I believe if we can give Nasy enough time that he will.”

“Of course you do Captain, it’s why he chose you to lead his team.”

 

********************************

 

The way the General tells the story, he met Nasy when he was a bright eyed Lieutenant without a care in the world and Nasy upended his entire world order and belief structure in 5 careful words. Neither the General or Nasy elaborates on what those five words but Alex maybe has money on them having been ‘I am from outer space.’

Sullivan must have been waiting for the conference to end, likely he has something set up at the desk outside his office that tells him when Alex is on or off line, and he taps twice on the door then comes in with a takeout container.

Alex loves Liz like a sister and Arturo like the father that he’d wished was his, but he’s going to get _really_ tired of food from the Crashdown.

“There are other restaurants in town,” Alex mentions, he feels awful just mentioning it, because his name is written on the top of the container with a heart so Liz knew it was coming to him.

“I know sir, but there’s just something about going in and ordering a Lunar Lunch Special or a Beam Me Up Burger that just fills me with glee,” Sullivan says.

“Anything of note going on in the warehouse?”

“Nasy and Canvers were arguing about something earlier, don’t know what and it seems to have blown over so I don’t think it was you need to intervene important.”

Alex eyes him.

“I grade on a curve sir, if they’d actually gotten physical I would have come and got you because…”

“I would have waved my crutch at them and they both would have been filled with remorse?”

“Well yeah,” Sullivan shrugs. “I did those not a background, background checks, e-mailed you with the high and low points.”

“Anything flag?”

“Mr. Geurin might have a problem with authority and Doctor Valenti is so squeaky clean he actually makes me a little nervous. Nothing that would raise red flags on an actual background check that I could see.”

“Good,” Alex breathes out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “That’s good.”

 

 

********************************

 

There is actually a conference room in their appropriated warehouse, so they all sit at the table with Nasy standing off to the side.

“So what are we looking at?” Alex finally asks, the folder the Nasy had slid him makes almost no sense, he’s the computer guy not the science guy and this is _all_ science, and not even regular science but Nasy’s alien science at that.

“One of the pods was damaged,” Nasy says. “Probably when they crashed, I thought I would be able to say for some certainty when they opened but I can’t open the data links between my ship and the pods.”

“So we don’t have any idea what age bracket we’re looking for? You know, at all?”

“They could be anywhere between 20-40,” Nasy says.

“That’s a huge age range,” Barrows whistles.

“And I can’t narrow it down any further than that, because I can’t tell what age they came out of the pods at. It should have been 18, fully formed adults...” Nasy sounds like he’s fretting.

“So they could have been kids or they could have been adults, we have no way of knowing?”

“I’ll keep trying to get the link open, if I can figure out what’s blocking it I can get more data but…”

“Well there would have been three of them, right?” McDonald asks. “There can’t be that many groups of three that just show up on the outskirts of town can there?”

Alex stills for a minute, because three kids wandering in a desert…

It’s fucking nuts, that’s what it is and he pushes it from his mind to focus on later because he doesn’t have proof and the very _last_ thing he needs is Nasy following him home right now.

He taps his fingers against the table, “Mexico border is just shy of 200 miles away, you’d be surprised how many groups show up on the outskirts of town.”

“Jesus.”

“So we abandon the notion of finding your kids for now, if they’re still in town hopefully you’re right and they have been visiting the pods and they’ll make some ruckus when they discover them missing.”

“I don’t like leaving them out there alone,” Nasy says. “I’ve already been away for so long and…”

“And there’s nothing to be done about it right now,” Alex says firmly. “You’ll keep searching for a way to find them in the meantime…”

“Business as usual.”

Alex nods at him, “business as usual.”

 

********************************

 

He doesn’t need to look at the not a background check or the newspaper articles he’d google searched for. He knows what they say.

Three kids, wandering in the desert, no names, no parents, no idea where they were and not able to speak at all when they were first found.

He runs his hands over his face and tries to remind himself that breathing is not optional and unless he wants Canvers finding him passed out at his desk from lack of oxygen…

He doesn’t know what Michael, Max or Isobel even _know_ ; do they _know_ they’re not human? If he brings this up to any one of them is it going to completely upend their entire lives?

Isobel to the outside looks to be happily married, Max seems to have a life that only half revolves around Liz; the only one drifting is Michael and Alex doesn’t want to give him any more reasons to drift. He wants to give him reasons to settle.

Nasy says someone was visiting the pods and the options for who that could be are limited to those three or Nasy. Unless there is some mysterious fifth party that is somehow involved.

Which it’s Nasy, and aliens, so there is likely another party, and the likelihood that this new fifth alien will ultimately end up pointing a gun at one or all of them is very high.

“You okay sir?” Canvers closes the door behind him, like he can sense that Alex is close to a breaking point and doesn’t want any witnesses.

Alex leans forward, elbows on the desk, hands covering his face. “I’m pretty sure I know who Nasy’s kids are.”

“You didn’t say anything so I’m assuming this is something we’re not telling Nasy at the moment,” Canvers says, Alex waves at the monitor on his right, does not actually look at the screen or Canvers.

“Huh, that doesn’t actually mean…” Alex uncovers his face long enough to glare at him.

“I’m assuming you know who the three kids in the article are? They’d be around your age right? If I’m doing the math right?”

“Max and Isobel Evans,” he pauses and Canvers looks at him expectantly. “Michael.”

“Oh sweet Jesus,” Canvers sighs, “You know all those times that Nasy promises you his first born for not abandoning him after he does something truly stupid? I really didn’t think you were going to take him literally.”

 

********************************

 

Michael is waiting at the cabin, sitting on the porch with his legs propped on another chair, beer in his hand. He looks normal and relaxed.

“What are you going to do?” Canvers asks.

“Nothing, I’m going to go inside and eat dinner and then I’m going to go to sleep,” Alex looks over at him, “I’m not going to ask the guy that I’ve known for close to 20 years if he knows he’s an alien.”

“You’re not going to be able to keep it from Nasy forever, he’s going to use the sixth sense he has for knowing when you’re hiding something from him and sniff it out. You’ve got _maybe_ a week at most before he figures it out on his own.”

“Couple of days,” Alex says. “Let’s get everything secure, then give everyone a weekend and then I’ll tell Nasy.”

And hopefully in the meantime he’ll figure out how to broach the subject of aliens with Michael without coming off sounding like a lunatic.

 

 

 

******************************************************************************

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Unseen Flight 8/?**

 

Canvers doesn’t get out of the car with him this time, he has nothing to take in and with his regular crutch back he’s more mobile.

“I didn’t know what time you’d be coming home, so I just made a stir fry,” Michael says. He sets his beer down and comes to his feet as Alex comes up on the porch. His hand is still wet cool from the bottle when he touches Alex’s cheek.

“You don’t need to feed me,” Alex murmurs, he leans forward and lets himself relax into the arms that wrap around him.

He can hear the crunch of the gravel as Canvers backs out of the driveway and back down the road, he rests his head in the curve of Michael’s neck and breathes, lets Captain Manes drive away with Canvers so it’s just Alex thinking he could fall asleep like this.

Michael curves a hand around the nape of his neck and pulls back just enough to look at him, that hand keeping him right there.

Alex doesn’t know what he’s looking for but he stares at him long enough that Alex is trying to remember which of Nasy’s kids was supposed to be the mind one. He’d thought it was the girl ( _Isobel_ his brain helpfully reminds him) but maybe it was one of the boys instead.

Michael kisses him, a soft press of his lips and Alex’s lips part between one second and the next and the arm not hindered by the crutch keeping him on his feet settles low on Michael’s back.

The frantic ‘this might be the last time we ever do this’ kisses were the stuff some of his best dreams were made of; but _this_ is better. The slow leisurely ‘we have all the time in the fucking world so we’re going to take it’ kisses that make his knees weak and steal his breath from his chest.

When Michael pulls away he touches their foreheads together and they just stand there, holding one another in the silence.

“You know what I miss?” Michael asks softly and Alex makes a noise in the back of his throat that he hopes can be construed as ‘oh my god what’?

“The piercings and the jewelry,” he smirks at him, “the eyeliner.”

Alex rolls his eyes at him.

“Feed me Michael,” he says and the smile on Michael’s face when Alex says his first name without prompting, it makes his heart sing.

 

********************************

 

There is a TV and a bluray player in his living room, he knows they weren't there when he left that morning.

Alex doesn’t say anything about it, though he thinks this means that they’re living together now? He’s pretty sure that’s a conversation they should have had or should be having. But he’s content for the moment to just lay on the couch with his head in Michael’s lap, letting Michael play with his hair and watch some inane comedy that he doesn’t care about.

He falls asleep at some point and when he wakes up he’s in his bed with Michael curled up beside him. He has no clue how he got there, he definitely doesn't remember waking up and he’d already taken the prosthetic off so moving from the couch to the bed should have been a production that he remembered vividly.

Michael’s scarred hand is resting on his stomach and Alex touches it gently, Michael’s face twitches and the things that fill Alex with regret can be narrowed down to this hand that his father did his best to destroy just because Alex dared to love the person it was attached to.

 

 

********************************

 

“So are you going to get a day off soon?” Michael asks when they’re sitting together at the kitchen table, they’ve already finished eating and they’re just sitting there with Alex’s foot resting on Michael’s thigh drinking their coffee and being quiet.

It’s so utterly domestic that the seventeen year old boy that still lives in the deep recesses of his brain is in heaven.

“Hopefully we can get everyone up to speed and maybe rotate some days off,” Alex says, he narrows his eyes at him in suspicion. “Why?”

Michael sighs, like everyone he has to deal with are both stupid and an annoyance. “Max wants to have everyone over for dinner,” he seems bewildered by this fact and Alex hides his smiles behind his coffee cup. Because he's _pretty_ sure that this has something to do with Liz and wanting to meld their two friend groups into one friend group.

“I’ll work on it and let you know, it won’t likely be an actual weekend day though,” he warns.

“I’m sure that’ll be fine, it’s not like everyone doesn’t have a job that has them actually _working_ on a weekend or anything,” Michael shrugs and Alex smiles.

********************************

 

Canvers and Barrows have been busy, they’ve mocked up a tentative schedule for days off which Canvers presents to him once they get into his office.

“You know you’ll actually have to sleep at some point, right?” he asks pointedly. Because this schedule means that Canvers likely dropped him off and then promptly went back to the warehouse so that he and Barrows could work it out.

“I had a meeting with our six newbies last night too; they are all up to speed and probably going to piss themselves the first time they see actual tech or anything.”

“I still don't want them here by themselves,” Alex says, though he can see from the schedule laid out in front of him that Canvers and Barrows have already taken care of that.

“They’re all super green,” Canvers says. “In my head I know I was their age when I first met Nasy but Jesus they’re so fucking young they make me feel old by comparison.”

“Speaking of Nasy…” Alex starts.

Canvers looks at him with a startled expression, Alex laughs at him.

“I didn’t talk to Michael about it,” Alex says, “but you’re right, I need to talk to Nasy so he knows that he doesn’t need to focus all his energy on finding them and I need to talk to Michael, and probably Max and Isobel sooner rather than later.”

“You think we’re gearing up for trouble of some sort?”

Alex rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “I don’t know, but it’s us and it’s been quiet,” he sits there for a minute, stares blindly at the schedule in front of him until the words are just a jumble of blurred letters.

“I think Michael and I are in a better place, maybe, and I just have this feeling that the longer I keep it a secret the more likely it is that one of those three is going to stumble on or into something that will require us to intervene at a level that might mean he _won’t_ be talking to me by the end of it.”

 

********************************

 

Alex goes out with Sullivan for lunch, he hadn’t been going to, he’s got a list of things he needs to accomplish. But he wants to see Liz and Maria and he knows Maria has been eating lunch with Liz at the Crashdown so he figures he needs to eat anyway…

He texts them both to warn them he’s coming though, just in case they’re not available.

“So Michael didn’t kill and bury you up at the cabin, Liz was starting to worry,” Maria says as he slides into the booth across from her.

“I know you can take care of yourself, don’t let her fool you,” Liz rolls her eyes. “Specials?”

“Of course,” Alex says, “Can you eat with us or too busy?”

“Papa?” Liz calls.

“Come, come dos comidas eres muy flaca de lejos,” Papa Ortecho calls back.

“Scooch over Alex,” Liz nudges him in the shoulder with her finger until Alex slides further into the booth.

“So I don’t want any details, because you’re like my brother but things are good, right? I mean there has to be a reason that Michael isn’t boozing it up at the Wild Pony every night anymore and I figure it’s because he’s spending all his time with you.”

“We’re good, talked about a few things, probably not everything we need to but…” Alex shrugs. Liz leans into his side and smiles up at him.

“What?”

“Nothing, I just don’t think I realized how unhappy you really were.”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

“You glow,” Maria rolls her eyes at both of them. “If you were a woman I’d ask if you were pregnant, but you’re not so I won’t.”

“You look happy,” Liz says, “And it’s a good look on you so I’m going to ignore the fact that it’s Michael for the time being and focus on that.”

Alex looks over at her and Liz is playing with her fingers, twisting them around one another and pointedly not making eye contact, he glances over at Maria and she looks just as confused as he thinks he probably does.

They’re going to have a good, drama free lunch though and that means not asking Liz what her problem with Michael is.

 

********************************

 

Nasy is reclining on the couch in his office when he gets back from lunch. He’s not sure where the couch came from, it definitely wasn’t there when he _left_ for lunch.

“Sullivan’s got lunch for everyone,” he says.

“I’ll get it later, Eric said you wanted to talk to me?” Nasy looks a little lost, he sometimes get this way when they’re hip deep in something that doesn’t require his particular expertise set.

Alex closes the door and turns one of the chairs in front of his desk around, he unhooks the crutch from his arm and balances it against the desk as he sits.

“Are you going to send me back to Lackland? I can find them, I just need…”

“I’m not sending you back to Lackland,” Alex says, cuts off that train of thought immediately. He sends Nasy back to Lackland by himself the General will scoop him up and send him off to another team. There’s several out in the field at the moment, any one of them would love to be working with him.

But he’s Alex’s, he belongs with their team and he’s not going anywhere unless he expressly requests permission to go.

“I’m worthless right now, Barrows has got the computers all hooked up to the ship and the pods aren’t cooperating, and you won’t let me look for them so…”

“I know who they are,” Alex says softly.

Nasy shoots up to a sitting position. “Did you just say…?”

“I believe I know who your kids are,” he clarifies, he’s not sure, not 100% anyway.

Not enough to put Nasy through believing they’ve been found when it turns out that Michael, Max and Isobel’s parents just sucked thoroughly and abandoned their kids in the middle of a fucking desert.

Not enough to give Michael, Max and Isobel hope that they might have family out there somewhere that loved them enough to send them to what was supposed to be safety.

“I was right, you did know them,” Nasy breathes.

“I don’t know, not for sure. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up just yet,” Alex looks at him and Nasy is staring at him with wide dark eyes that look older then Nasy actually appears. “I need you to get me a piece of tech that will only respond if they’re who we think they are.”

“I want to meet them, see them, Alex…” Nasy says.

“When I know for sure that I’m right, I’ll arrange a meeting for you to sit down with them,” Alex leans forward, touches Nasy’s hand and Nasy turns his hand over and grips it tightly.

“I need them to know I didn’t fail them, that I’ve done everything in my power to protect them,” Nasy bows his head so Alex can’t see his face, but from the shaking of his shoulders he knows he’s crying.

 

********************************

 

 _Do you think Max and Isobel would be free to eat with us tonight?_ he texts to Michael as he’s trying to get out of his office without Nasy figuring out how to hitch a ride with him.

 _Isobel has plans with Noah but Max is free? i guess i’m making dinner for 3 instead of 2?_ Michael texts him back twenty minutes later.

_ <3 _

He has a tablet in his laptop bag in place of his actual laptop, it turns on when Nasy runs his hands over it. Nasy assures him that if Michael, Max and Isobel are who they think they are that it will turn on for them as well.

He’s not sure having someone else there is a good idea, but honestly he’d kind of like to get it over with all at one time. Isobel not being available is unfortunate, and he’d almost rather it be her and Michael instead of Max and Michael if there was only going to be two of them there.

He still sets up a check in time with Barrows just in case it goes poorly.

 

********************************

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come, come dos comidas eres muy flaca de lejos - Eat, eat two meals, you're too skinny by far (or so google translate tells me).


	9. Chapter 9

**Unseen Flight 9/?**

 

Max is already at the cabin when he gets there, Alex can see them both sitting on the porch, kicked back and relaxed. Michael is laughing and Max is smiling.

Alex remembers them back in high school, they had been closer than close. The two of them and Isobel had been their own little insular group that sometimes allowed other people in but not really. He supposes he knows why now.

The trauma of what they went through in the desert together, three kids just wandering with no idea of who they were or even where they were.

“You sure you don’t want me to stay?” Canvers asks, he doesn’t do nervous, not in the entire time that Alex has known him. But there’s something in his voice that makes Alex want to say yes. He also doesn’t want to put Michael and Max in a position where they feel a need to put up masks around another very obviously military man so he knows he can’t have Canvers there.

“No, I’ve set up a check in time with Barrows,” Alex looks over at him and Canvers is gripping the steering wheel. “Go to the hotel, get some sleep, the bags under your eyes have bags you know.”

Canvers rolls his eyes at him, “go find out if you married into Nasy’s family without actually knowing you were marrying into Nasy’s family.”

“Check on Nasy, keep him distracted?”

“I’ve got him, maybe I’ll take him out for a beer or something.”

“You know Nasy doesn’t drink.”

“Who said the beer was for him.”

 

********************************

 

Michael has made barbecue for dinner, Alex isn’t sure where the grill came from, it either could have come from the storage shed behind the house or Michael brought his own.

“I need to get medical to sign off on some exercise if you’re going to keep cooking like this,” Alex says when he walks into the kitchen; he’s changed out of his uniform and put on sweats and a t-shirt, Michael hooks a finger into the waist band of his sweatpants and pulls him up flush against him, smiling down at him.

“Oh my god,” Max mutters behind him and Michael laughs at him.

“I take it Max knows.”

“I was there when Maria punched him,” Max says, “and I kind of already knew that something was going on between you guys back in high school. Not that Michael told me or anything.” He sounds so bitter about it that Alex wants to laugh, but he’s also pretty sure that Michael never told Max _anything_ about what happened. Including what Alex’s dad had done to them.

To him.

“Well it went to shit pretty quick so,” Alex says softly and Michael cups his face in his hands, doesn’t look away or let him look away and when Alex leans forward he kisses him. Sweet and chaste, just a brush of their lips so as to not scandalize Max.

“I was told you were going to feed me, do I have to watch the pre-show or can you just call me when dinner’s ready?”

“I need to talk to you guys about something,” Alex says. “After dinner though because I’m hungry.”

He turns away and pretends to not notice the silent conversation that Michael and Max are having over his head.

 

********************************

 

There’s a salad with dinner, but there’s also some baked mashed potato thing that tastes like heaven and barbecue that melts in his mouth.

Alex makes another mental note to contact medical about a light exercise regimen because a couple more days of eating like this and he might not fit into his uniform anymore.

 

********************************

 

They settle in the living room, Alex and Michael on the couch, Max on the chair. Michael and Max both have beers in their hands while Alex’s are empty because he’s too nervous to actually be holding anything at the moment.

“So what’s up?” Max asks, “I know you didn’t invite us here so Michael could prove he can cook and didn’t bother to share that with anyone else.”

Alex sits there for a minute and finally takes a breath and reaches over for his bag, he set it next to the couch when he came into the cabin because he figured this was where they’d end up and he wanted it close at hand.

“So there isn’t much I can actually say,” he says, “not without you guys signing a bunch of forms and background checks happening and other stuff that take a huge amount of time and resources, but I do get a little leeway in cases like these…”

Nasy had wrapped the tablet up in a faded old cloth, he’s sure it’s something important to Nasy so Alex sets it aside carefully to return to him.

The tablet that Nasy gave him is a about 2 inches thick, it looks like a very smooth very square rock. When Nasy runs his hands over the surface it lights up with symbols and colors, Alex touches it softly just to prove that it doesn’t do anything.

He looks over at Max who looks like he’s about to have a heart attack, over at Michael whose eyes are wide and scared. Whether for himself and Max or for him he doesn’t know.

Max’s mouth opens once, twice before he finally gets words out, “What do you know?”

Alex shakes his head. “I need you to touch this, then I can answer your questions,” his mouth twists, “well some of your questions because bureaucracy is a son of a bitch even in cases like this.”

Max looks over at Michael and Michael’s eyes flit between the two of them before he sighs and reaches over, his hand is shaking when he presses his fingers just barely to the top of the tablet.

But that little touch is just enough, the tablet lights up, like it does for Nasy. Michael looks so defeated when he lets his hand drop away, he looks at him, and Alex understands that on some level that Michael thought he was protecting him by not telling him.

But Alex doesn’t need to be protected, not by Michael, not _from_ Michael. He’s the one that does the protecting now, and part of that is knowing what he needs to be protecting.

He still reaches over to touch his hand and Michael latches onto it, Alex smiles at him and then holds the tablet out to Max to touch.

Max leans forward, does the same as Michael had, barely touching the tips of his fingers to it and it lights up again.

“I’m assuming if Isobel hadn’t had a date with her husband that it would do the same for her?” Alex asks, he knows it will and Max shrugs. Noncommittal for the moment. Alex understands this, he personally has never been part of the explanation part of this and is fairly sure he’s going to fuck it all up.

Maybe already has.

He sets the tablet down on the table, and digs in the bag for his cellphone.

“What are you doing?” Max asks in alarm coming to his feet, Michael right alongside him. Their fight or flight reflex is all flight it seems.

“I need to call in an all clear or we’ll have visitors in about 15 minutes,” he says, he holds the phone in his hand and looks between them. Max waves his hand at him, Michael is vibrating next to him.

“Captain?” Barrows answer the phone on the first ring, “cutting it kind of close.”

“It’s not really a topic of conversation that is easy to ease into,” Alex says.

“So you’re good? I don’t need to send Canvers back up there?”

“I'm pretty sure he’s less than a mile down the road, so you can call and tell him to go to the motel and get some sleep.”

“What do you want him to tell Nasy?”

“Tell him it was a positive and I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow.”

 

********************************

 

The tablet is sitting in the middle of the coffee table like a paperweight. Both Michael and Max seem to be taking turns alternately staring at it or him.

“So what do you want to know?” Alex asks. “Keeping in mind that there are some questions that I’m just not going to be able to answer right now.”

Max looks at him, “How long?”

“Have I known about aliens or about you guys?” Michael and Max both look at him with surprise, he figures they probably thought the answers would be the same.

“Both?”

“Aliens about 6 years give or take, you guys about 24 hours,” Alex says, he looks over at Michael who now won’t look back at him.

“Can I text Isobel? Have her come up?” Max asks, he sounds like he’s scared Alex will say no and he wonders how many people they’ve actually told. And if they had told anyone if those explanations had gone horribly awry.

“Yeah, of course,” Alex says, he pushes himself to his feet. “I’m going to make some coffee,” Max nods once sharply focusing on his phone and Michael doesn’t respond. “Michael?” when he gets no response he he resorts to a sharp, “Geurin,” and Michael finally looks up at him.

“Come help me make coffee,” he says pointedly and holds out his hand, Michael looks between it and him and finally pushes himself to his feet. He acts like he’s lost everything and Alex can’t figure out what he’s missing but when Michael goes to turn away to walk into the kitchen Alex takes his arm to stop him.

Wraps his arms around him instead and squeezes him tightly to remind that _he’s still there_. That he’s not going anywhere. It takes a moment for Michael’s arms to come up around him in return, clutching at him like he’s afraid Alex will disappear if he lets go.

“We’re okay Michael,” he murmurs and Michael’s arms tighten just a bit more, “we’re okay.”

“So I guess I’ll, uh, go make the coffee,” Max says awkwardly and Alex hears his footsteps on the floor walking away.

Michael pulls back just a bit, enough that they’re looking at each other and there’s still some fear there in his eyes, Alex doesn’t like seeing it there.

He kisses him instead, cups his face in his hands and touches him in the softest way he knows how.

“We’re okay,” he says softly and if he says it often enough maybe Michael might actually believe him.

 

********************************

 

Isobel shows up dressed like she had indeed been on a date and Alex feels sort of bad for not putting this off until they all three could have been there. But from the way Michael is sitting close to him on the couch, hand wrapped tightly around his… he couldn’t have put this off any more days and expected to still have a boyfriend at the end of it.

24 hours was probably pushing it some.

“Alex knows,” Max says as he leads her into the living room, Alex had been going to answer the door but Michael wouldn’t let go so Max went instead.

“I thought we hadn’t come to a decision on if we were telling any more people?” Isobel asks, she sounds annoyed. Which means her husband _definitely_ doesn’t know but someone _else_ has been told.

And it hadn’t gone well. Alex is willing to bet even money that this is the root of Liz’s new issue with Michael.

“Alex already knew,” Max says and the expression on Isobel’s face goes from annoyed to scared just as the guys had.

Probably growing up in Roswell hadn’t been the greatest idea for them, not with all the propaganda about the military and alien experiments and the crash in general at each street corner.

Not with a museum dedicated to the crash and all it’s supposed horrors. Alex can freely admit, knowing what he knows and having seen the documents that he has, that they can’t even _imagine_ how much worse things actually were.

“Max can you…” Alex waves a hand at the tablet still sitting on the coffee table and Max makes a face.

“Can’t you just take our word that Isobel was there with us?” he asks and Alex raises an eyebrow at him.

“It’s not going to steal my mind or anything is it?” Isobel asks.

“It just lights up,” Michael says as she leans down, presses her whole hand against the front, no hesitation on her part and the tablet, as expected, lights up.

She sits down in the chair Max had been occupying, Max leaning over the back of it. All of them looking at him expectantly.

“So I guess I should probably tell you about Nasy first.”

 

********************************

 

Nasy is the easiest part of the story to tell. Because Alex _knows_ at least part of Nasy’s story.

Has heard it enough times that he knows that Nasy was in a separate ship, that he was flying support for the ship that was carrying the pods holding Michael, Max and Isobel.

Nasy says there was no one else around that the explosion that tore apart the ship he wasn’t on came from _inside_ the ship. The cockpit went one direction, the back half holding the pods went another. Nasy had to make a choice then, a split second decision that he regrets and doesn’t regret.

He couldn’t save all of them, he was only one person. So it was either the pilot or the pods and he chose to get the pods to safety and then go back to try and save the pilot of the other ship.

When he returned though, he was too late, the ship had already been found, the pilot who Nasy never identifies by name was already dead he thought.

So he buried his ship and then hid in the cave with the pods.

“He thought they were going to open right away,” Alex says, Michael is squeezing his hand so tightly it’s almost uncomfortable but Alex won’t be the one to complain or let go. Isobel is pale, tears welling up in her eyes that haven’t fallen yet. “But they didn’t so he left them there and tried to figure out what to do.”

“How did he get mixed up with the military?” Michael asks. “You’ve mentioned him before, once or twice…”

“That’s his story to tell, I know some of the basics but it’s really his story.” He knows how Nasy and the General met, but he’s never been quite sure what made Nasy decide to approach the then lieutenant. He’s asked, they’ve _all_ asked, Nasy might actually tell these three though.

“Was she our mother?” Isobel asks, her hands are folded together and she looks like her heart is breaking.

“No, she was, I guess guardian is the best word for it. I’ll set some time up for you guys to talk to Nasy if you want? I mean you don’t have to do it right away if you don’t want to, whenever you’re ready. He really wants to see you all, but I have plenty of stuff to keep him busy if you need some time to process first.”

The three of them all look at each other, that silent conversation that makes Alex wonder if he needs to be worrying about a psychic link between the three. He would have hoped that Nasy would have mentioned if that was a thing.

“No, we’d,” Max clears his throat. “We’d like to meet him, talk to him.”

Alex nods at him. “I’ll set it up.”

 

********************************

 

“I could have gone with one of them,” Michael says after Isobel and Max have both left to go their respective homes. He’d offered up the spare bedroom but Isobel had waved it off and Max had followed suit.

“Did you want to go with one of them?” Alex asks, “I mean I want you to stay, but if you don’t want to be here…”

The thought of Michael leaving doesn’t sit right, doesn’t _feel_ right, but he also doesn’t want him to feel obligated to stay just because he knows Alex knows.

“I just,” Michael drags a hand over his face, through his hair, he looks exhausted. “I don't want to make things uncomfortable for you.”

Alex sighs, he’s bone tired and morning is coming up fast. In the morning he gets to talk to Nasy and probably the General.

“We’re okay Michael, I’ll keep saying it until you believe it.”

Michael looks over at him and Alex _knows_ he doesn’t believe him, in his head he curses every group home and foster family that made it virtually impossible for Michael to believe that he was wanted anywhere.

 

********************************

 

Alex meets Canvers at the door, he’d tried to be extra quiet getting ready in the morning because Michael had finally fallen into a fitful sleep about 5 am and Alex plans for him to keep sleeping.

“You look like shit,” Canvers says, “did you manage any sleep?”

“Couple of hours, I’ve got some coffee, it’ll be fine,” he’s already feeling wired from the caffeine, it’s going to be a long day.

Canvers looks at him like he’s judging his life choices and finding them all suspect, then his expression changes and Alex turns to see Michael standing in the doorway to the bedroom.

“Were we too loud? I didn’t want to wake you up,” Alex says, he stands his ground as Michael ambles over. There’s a look in his eyes that makes Alex think that Michael expects him to turn away, he takes great pride in the fact that he doesn’t, that when Michael leans in close to kiss him good morning he allows it. Presses a hand against Michael’s cheek to keep him there for the moment.

A month ago he doesn’t think he would have been brave enough to do this.

He smiles at him when they part and it takes a second for Michael to return it.

“You said we were okay,” Michael mutters.

“We are,” Alex says, he presses a kiss to the side of Michael’s mouth and then turns to see Canvers avidly staring at the ceiling.

He clears his throat and Canvers looks at him, then looks at Michael.

“Eric Canvers,” he says and he holds his hand out for Michael to shake, Michael looks at it for minute like he’s not sure what the hell to do but finally takes it.

“Michael Geurin.”  
  
“You hurt him and I know at least 50 ways to make you disappear that won’t have me brought up on murder charges,” Canvers says conversationally. “And I know ten people that will help me.”

“Oh my god,” Alex mutters.

“I know at least four people that you should probably add to that list,” Michael says and he sounds amused which is 100 percent better then he’d sounded just hours earlier.

“Don't humor him Michael.”

 

********************************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was so unbelievably hard for me to write, I'm not sure why. Though I think it has something to do with the Michael Guerin in my head looking like I was torturing him purposefully who seemed half sure I was going to yank Alex away from him.
> 
> So it's done, finally! And now I can get to the next three chapters which are the ones that have been playing on repeat in my head since this show captured my muse. I think there are maybe 5-7 chapters left of this. Then maybe some one shot type additions. And another whole story that I've been mapping out while this chapter was trying to break my heart.
> 
> As always feedback is love! Thank you guys for reading and trusting me. :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Unseen Flight 10/?**

 

Alex walks into his office and would back right out again if Canvers weren’t directly on his heels penning him in.

“You knew,” he mutters feeling inexplicably betrayed.

“Captain Manes don’t be that way,” Doctor Evelyn (call me Evie) Jackson comes smoothly to her feet and doesn’t look at all put out by the fact that Alex is not happy to see her.

It’s the nature of their relationship, Evie is one of the primary doctors overseeing his medical care since the loss of part of his leg and as such is one of the three people that hold the power as to where he’ll ultimately end up.

He doesn’t like not having any control over this part of his future.

“Thank you Sergeant Canvers,” Evie says as she leans over and picks up her bag.

“Sorry boss,” Canvers says softly as he backs out of the room.

Evie wraps a hand around his arm and ushers him out of the office, “I had Sergeant Barrows find a nice quiet room so we can make sure that things are proceeding as expected or if we’re now behind schedule because the General decided to put you back to work.”

Alex manages a grin, because she sounds so annoyed.

“You know it doesn’t exactly work like that, right?”

Evie closes the door behind them when they step into the office, there’s no windows, one door. He sighs heavily.

“Nasedo’s words hold a lot of weight with the General, more weight than mine or Doctor Andrews do. If he wants you in a desert looking for alien artifacts, the General will have you in the desert searching for alien artifacts whether we say you’re physically or mentally ready for it or not.”

Alex knows the drill, he sits in one of the chairs, pulls up his pant leg and bares the prosthetic.

Evie sets her bag down and goes to her knees, pulling gloves out of her bag and sliding them on. She pushes his pant leg up that much further so she can see where the apparatus is actually connected.

“I stopped at the hospital and got a copy of what Doctor Valenti did when he saw you,” she disconnects the apparatus, rolls the sock down.

Her touch is cool and clinical.

“He really didn’t do much but forbid me to use it and then limit me to eight hours a day,” he says. It’ll be in the medical write up that he’s sure Kyle did.

“You were only supposed to be using it for eight hours at the most anyway,” she says, she presses her fingers at the scar. It’s still a little swollen, still a little sensitive. He should probably not even be using it and just making do with the crutches but he _needs_ to be as mobile as possible.

“It’s not as bad as I was expecting,” she admits, “so you’re doing something right or it’s healing better, faster than we thought it would.”

She slides the sock back in place and hands the prosthetic to him to put back on while she comes back to her feet and pulls the gloves off. They go into a pocket while she removes a thick folder from her bag, she flips back a couple of pages and sits down in the chair opposite him and makes a few notations.

“I’d like you to start trying a couple hours or so a day without using the crutch,” she says, her eyes are still focused on the file so she doesn’t see his surprise. He’d really thought she’d limit his time more.

“How are you feeling otherwise?” she asks, focusing back on him.

“Good,” he says, “I feel… settled I guess. I don’t really know how to explain it.”

“Does that have anything to do with having your team back in one place again? Or did things resolve in your personal life?”

“Both,” Alex pauses for a minute, “And I think I’ve proven that I can do my job even without the leg, and I think my team has proven they can allow me to my job even while they still have nightmares about me losing said leg. My personal life is… good… complicated but good,” he can’t help but smile.

 

********************************

Nasy is waiting at his door when he manages to escape Evie’s questions and prodding. She’s not his _actual_ therapist, but she asks a lot of the same questions that Doctor Andrews does so he’s almost certain they share information back and forth.

“I want to meet them,” Nasy starts with, all breathless excitement. Alex’s lack of sleep is going to mean a fairly short tolerance for Nasy’s normal energy levels.

“You’ll come with Canvers and I tonight, as long as when I text them to see if they’re all available to be there they are,” Alex says. He sits himself behind his desk and rubs at his eyes. He’s going to have to forego lunch and take a catnap just to keep himself moving.

“You look tired, did it go badly?” Nasy asks quietly, he crosses his arms across his chest and leans into the desk. “You told Canvers it was positive, so I thought it went okay, but now it looks like you didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“No, just stressful, I was worried I was going to fuck it up and they weren’t going to want anything to do with me at the end of it. Or it would be a negative result and they’d be having conversations right now on whether to have me committed because, you know, I thought they might be aliens,” Alex leans his head back against his chair and looks at Nasy.

“I’ll warn you that Michael has some severe fears of abandonment, so you might want to tread very carefully there when you’re talking to them.”

“I thought they grew up together?” Nasy asks, he sounds alarmed.

“Growing up together and being raised together are two very different things. Max and Isobel were placed with the same family and Michael…” Alex pauses, because he wants to prepare Nasy for the worst but they’re also not his stories to tell. “Michael wasn’t placed with them.”

Nasy’s face just falls and he sits very carefully in the chair.

“He grew up alone,” Nasy says. “That’s my fault, I should have… I should have forced the issue and come back to check for them every year until they came out, I should have…”

“Nasy there are no more should haves unless you now remember burying a time machine somewhere in the desert,” Alex says firmly. “We can’t change the past, we can only move forward and that's what we’re going to do.”

 

********************************

 

 _I can bring Nasy by tonight, if all of you are available at 6?_ he texts, he sets his phone aside when there’s no immediate response.

They’re getting steady streams of data from Nasy’s ship computer and it’ll take all of them to decode it to useable data.

When Nasy had arrived and the other ship had crashed they hadn’t been the only ones that came in. It wasn’t until after Nasy started working with the then Lieutenant that they’d realized that there’d been almost 200 simultaneous landings, almost all of them had been coded in their system as Unseen Flights, written off at the time as a meteor or particle dust or some other inane thing that meant someone didn’t have to waste the energy to follow up.

Because aliens, making a mass exodus from the destruction of their world to our world, was not something that back in 1947 was a thing that anyone was worried about too much.

Nasy was the first alien he met in person, he wasn’t the last.

And it turns out in the end that he wasn’t even the first.

 _we’ll be here_ Michael texts back and he smiles at his phone and then sets it aside, he has a lot of work to get done before it’s time to leave.

 

********************************

 

He sets a timer and then texts Perkins to come remind him an hour prior so that he’s actually ready to leave and not buried in codes and data streams.

It still startles him when she shows up in his peripheral vision, there’s a lunch container sitting to his left that hasn’t been opened and an empty bottle of water that he vaguely remembers drinking.

“Canvers and Nasy think they got connected to the pods finally,” she says as she stands there waiting for him to focus on her. He blinks at her glances back at the screen and she snaps her fingers at him. “Nope, you’re done for the day sir.”

“You said Canvers and Nasy…” he rubs a hand over his face. He’s exhausted, absolutely ready to just crawl in bed and start the next day over again.

Except Canvers and Nasy are coming to the cabin with him to talk to Michael, Max and Isobel. Nasy won’t want them there for the ‘talk’, he’ll bring his laptop and while he can’t access any of the code from home they do have yearly reviews that need to be done.

“Think they’ve managed a connection to the pods,” she nods. “If the link works we should start getting some data dumps late tonight, early in the morning. They’re running some pretty neat sub programs,” she winces like she just realizes she said something that she shouldn’t have.

“What kind of sub programs?”

“Nothing that you have time to dig into tonight, they should be fully downloaded and catalogued tomorrow,” she says, he raises an eyebrow at her.

“Canvers wants to leave by 5 and you’re cutting it kind of close sir. And I think Nasy will just walk if it comes to it.”

“Nasy doesn’t actually know where I live so I’m not too worried about that.”

 

********************************

 

The car is silent for nearly the entire trip. Alex knows Nasy well enough that he knows he’s going through worst and best case scenarios in his head. He would normally be talking trying to keep Nasy focused, in the right headspace, but he’s so exhausted that he can’t actually find the energy.

Plus he’s half concerned that it’s going to go poorly himself, he should have forced them all to take 24 hours and let the idea settle before committing to having Nasy talk to them.

“What if they’re mad at me?” Nasy asks suddenly as they’re turning into Alex’s driveway.

“Nasy we talked about this,” Canvers says quietly.

“Yes, yes, we’ve talked about it at length, but I’ve not discussed it with Alex so…”

“Just be honest with them,” Alex says as Canvers comes to a stop next to Michael’s truck, he can see only one other vehicle which means that either Max and Isobel had ridden together or someone isn’t there yet.

Michael must have heard the vehicle because he comes out of the cabin, he doesn’t look exhausted so he had to have slept some more after Alex left that morning, Max and Isobel join him. The three of them standing side by side and he can hear the indrawn hiccupped breath from Nasy.

“Nasy…” Alex says softly.

“They look just like,” Nasy’s voice is trembling and Alex wills him to not start crying. If Nasy is going to lose it just looking at them Alex isn’t sure how exactly a conversation between the four is going to work.

“I’m okay,” Nasy says, he takes a deep breath, exhales it slowly and then moves to open the door.

Nasy knows not to move forward, they don’t know him so he waits for Alex to get out, Canvers brings both their laptop bags and they follow him up the steps.

They stand there awkwardly for the moment until Alex realizes that everyone is waiting on him to make the introductions.

“Michael Guerin, Max Evans, Isobel Evans-Bracken,” he gestures to each one, “this is Nasy, Nasedo,” he corrects himself. Nasy is only Nasy to a select group of people; him and his team, the General. He thinks these three will be among that group but he won’t presume to think that it will be immediate.

“Hey,” Max answers for the three and Nasy manages a smile and a nod before the soft, “hello.”

“Do you want to talk to them inside or outside?” Alex asks.

“Your home is secure?” Nasy asks, Alex shoots him a look and Nasy rolls his eyes at him. “Of course it is because you are you, inside I think. At least for the beginning.”

“Let us know when you need us,” Canvers says.

“You’re not coming in?” Isobel asks, there’s alarm in her voice and he thinks that she’s the one channeling the panic on Michael’s face, the way Max’s face has closed off.

“Not for the beginning,” Nasy says, “there are things that need to be said that don’t need witnesses.”

“That’s Nasy speak for our tiny human brains can’t possibly understand what he’s going to tell you so he chooses to not include us so we don't ask the dumb questions and slow down the process.”

 

********************************

 

There’s no shouting from the house which Alex takes as a good sign, no one storms away in anger or frustration and there’s no sound of weapons being fired.

“Hands down better than our last debacle,” Canvers says absently.

Alex hmms at him and focuses on Sullivan’s review that they’ve been tossing back and forth on their shared drive.

It’s not really fair to put in a comment of ‘hands down favorite admin’, especially since that's not even supposed to be his job.

“You know if you’d just let the General assign you some support staff…” Canvers starts.

“That would mean choosing a base of operations and setting up shop stateside,” he’s been thinking about it, it’d be ideal if they could stay where they are but the base is closed and they’re only being allowed to use it now because the General likely called in favors to keep them under the radar.

Eventually they’ll have to move the ship and the pods to a more secure facility with an active military presence.

But that day is not today, and if he tells the General he needs support staff he’d better have a pretty damn good idea of where he wants to be based out of, and it’s going to have to be as close to Roswell as he can get or Michael will likely hurt him.

He hears the door open behind him and he presses save on the document they’re working on and closes his laptop. When he turns he can see Nasy is standing there, eyes red but not crying, no one is angrily pushing past him to get away.

“Okay?” he asks as he hands his laptop off to Canvers and gets to his feet, it takes him a second where Nasy and Canvers both wait with hands out as he balances.

“You and Michael are seeing each other?” Nasy asks, there’s an expression on his face Alex can’t place. He doesn’t seem angry about it which Alex is relieved by.

“Uh, yeah. I’m not sure if I want to know how that came up in a conversation about alien origins but, yes.”

“I explained the papers and what they are and what protections they provide for them and for their significant others and Max indicated that his prospective partner already knows, Isobel says her husband doesn’t and she would like to tell him and Michael just waved his hand at the door which either meant he didn’t care, or that he has somehow managed to take up with Canvers in the little over a week that we’ve been here or that he’s your mystery ex that you would never name for us,” Nasy says.

“Jesus Nasy, breathe,” Canvers says with a laugh.

“Which he then confirmed that the two of you were together so I didn’t have to worry that I’ve been so focused on other things that I’ve missed Canvers somehow becoming bisexual.”

“Isobel wants to tell her husband?” Alex asks, just to get Nasy back on track.

“I’ll get his name and have Barrows start a background check on him,” Canvers says as they follow Nasy into the house. “If it comes back clean then the Captain can have the abbreviated for human ears only version of whatever for alien ears only conversation _you_ have.”

“We talk about our plans to take over the human race.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve already signed in triplicate that you won’t do that exact thing,” Alex rolls his eyes.

They’ve had to do those for human ears only conversations before, some of those that came down with Nasy have led lives. Have had human partners and had children and in a lot of cases neither those partners or those children had any idea that they weren’t 100% completely human.

Some of those conversations went well, some of those conversations went horribly wrong.

And a background check won’t tell them if someone is going to go off the rails knowing they’ve been living with and making a life with an alien, but it’ll tell them if that person has stuff buried in their past that might make them more willing to sell out their partner to the highest bidder or pull a gun on them in a fit of anger.

 

********************************

 

Canvers takes Nasy and the papers with him when he leaves, likely they’ll go back to the warehouse so Canvers can get Barrows started on background checks and Nasy can busy his hands and mind with the data coming out of the pods and the ship.

Michael has just pulled a pan of something that smells amazing out of the oven when Alex comes back from changing out of his uniform. It makes his stomach grumble with a loud reminder of how hungry he is and that he didn't eat lunch. He’s left the prosthetic on because he likes Max and Isobel but he’s still not 100% comfortable not being on two feet (even if one of them is a fake foot) around them at the moment.

Plus he’s trying out Evie’s new try to get around without the crutches or brace thing.

It’s slow going, it’s going to take some work to build up speed. He’d been assured by his second physical therapist that he will run again if he so chooses, it will likely take a while though.

“I never would have taken you for a stress baker,” Max says.

“I’m not a stress baker,” Michael says, “I don’t bake,” he sounds so annoyed that Alex hides his laugh in a cough and Isobel snorts.

“I _cook_ ,” he clarifies, “I don’t _bake_.”

“I wouldn’t even have thought you could cook,” Isobel says, “you spend a lot of time eating takeout or at my dinner table.”

“I don’t like to cook for just myself,” Michael mutters, “It’s boring, how do I even know if it’s any good?”

“By not ending up in the hospital with food poisoning,” Max says sensibly and Isobel laughs.

They all look a little worn; Isobel especially looks fragile. Alex doesn’t ask what they talked about with Nasy. He’s sure at some point, once whatever Nasy has told them settles into their brains and they’ve had time to process that they’ll have questions.

Maybe Alex can answer them, maybe he’ll need to bring Nasy back up to answer them. But it’s out there now, no taking it back.

Michael sets the pan in the middle of the table and then turns to stop Alex from reaching his chair. He’d voice his disapproval but there’s a look in Michael’s eyes that make him wrap him up in his arms instead.

“They get like this,” Max says, like one day of watching them be together now makes him an expert on them and what they’re like.

“I should have called Noah and had him come, it’s been a long time since we had a date night that included dinner and a show,” Isobel says, there’s the clatter of silverware and Alex’s stomach growls again. Because there’s food and he’s not eating any of it.

“I didn’t eat lunch,” he mumbles against Michael’s neck. If it were just the two of them they could fill plates and eat on the couch and then Alex could curl up in Michael’s lap and sleep again. But there’s Max and Isobel sitting at their table and Michael is pulling back slightly so he can look at him.

“We’re okay,” he says softly. He’ll keep saying it for as long as Michael needs to hear the words, Michael presses a kiss to his lips then pulls away so he can pull Alex’s chair out for him. Alex grabs his hand, presses a kiss to his knuckles and smiles at him.

Michael smiles back, a thin tremulous thing, “we’re okay.”

********************************


	11. Chapter 11

**Unseen Flight 11/?**

 

 

“Someday,” Michael says softly just as Alex has finally managed to get comfortable and is maybe just a bit away from being able to turn his brain off and go to sleep. He makes a noncommittal noise so Michael knows he listening and still awake but probably mentally not up for an _actual_ conversation.

“Someday we’re going to climb into this bed and I’m going to manage to get your clothes off and we’re going to have sex.”

“I’ll have a weekend soon,” he mumbles against Michael’s shoulder. He thinks it might be Friday and Saturday, which is only like four days away, but it also might be Sunday and Monday. Regardless he has a lot to get done before he can think about having two days in a row off.

“I’ll have to figure out how to block out like 24 of those hours.”

“You’ll want to stock up on water and ibuprofen, and maybe pencil in some naptime if you expect us to be having sex for that entire 24 hours.”

“Well not the _entire_ 24 hours,” Michael says, “we’d probably die… but you know we could just be here and…”

“It’d be quiet time,” he rolls further into Michael, draws fingers down the side of Michael’s face so he can turn it toward him and leans up to kiss him softly. Sweetly.

“Quiet time,” Michael confirms. He runs his thumb across Alex’s mouth and smiles at him. “Go to sleep, you look like you’re going to pass out.”

 

********************************

 

There’s requests for background check approvals in his e-mail when he gets to his desk in the morning.

Max has requested Liz as expected, but Kyle is also on his list. He should probably talk to somebody about that but they’re all adults.

Isobel has requested Noah and Michael had requested him to which Canvers has added a cheeky DONE with a smiley face . The only person missing is Maria so he submits that request himself because the thought of telling everyone else and leaving Maria out doesn’t sit right. He’s actually kind of surprised that she hasn't figured it out on her own, _really_ surprised that Liz hadn’t already spilled the beans when there was a time that Liz would have told Maria everything.

He then forwards the whole batch of them off to the people that handle those kind of things that are not him.

“Have you looked at the code from the pods yet?” Canvers asks as he comes through the open door.

“I literally just finished sending off the background check requests, is this something that’s going to make me angry?”

“It’s something that’s made me go what the fuck and Nasy absolutely infuriated,” Canvers says, it’s telling that he closes the door and drags a chair around the desk.

“Jesus, that bad?”

Canvers gestures at the screen and Alex goes to the shared drive, “It’ll be the set that came in first,” he says.

Alex launches the program and watches the coding unfurl on the screen, a few things catch his eye right off the bat, one of them being that there’s actually _two_ competing lines of code.

It’s a wonder the pods didn’t just stop operating altogether.

“What the hell,” he stops the code drop and stares at it. These don’t even make any sense.

“Sullivan noticed it right off, and he pulled in Nasy and I, talked us through what exactly he was seeing because you know that the code shit isn’t why Nasy and I are here…” Canvers takes a deep breath, and just stops for a minute, like he’s trying to compose his thoughts into something more than a rant. “We’re fucking lucky as hell that the those kids even got out, if that second code hadn’t started running when it did… it basically tricked the pods into a malfunction and turned them into stasis pods instead of gestation pods…”

Nasy can’t have known about this, he wouldn’t have been so concerned about them if he’d known this was a possibility. But Nasy also plays things close to the vest. So…

“Did Nasy have any idea that this was even there?”

“He knew about the memory implantation, he’s mentioned it before remember? But he thought it was something generic like memories of their parents, of their childhood, I guess there was some worry about degradation of the memory due to being in the pods for so long but…”

“This is worse,” he can’t even imagine Michael not being Michael, of Max and Isobel not being who they were. If the code frozen on his screen had been allowed to complete its task…

Michael wouldn't be Michael, he’d be whoever his father was, Isobel her mother, Max his father.

“Can Nasy tell who wrote the codes?”

“No, but Sullivan says that just by the way they were entered that they were written by two different people. The second one was written as a way to combat the primary code, so someone obviously figured out what was going on, couldn’t eliminate the code completely so they tried to minimize the damage it would cause.”

McDonald has some code reading experience, if he has him and Sullivan help him.

“Alright get Sullivan to start going through the code line by line, when McDonald comes back in have him pick up where he leaves off. Let’s see if we can figure out which lines were written by who and what the actual end result was supposed to be. “

“There’s something else,” Canvers says.

“Of course there is,” Alex mutters.

“The pods were connected to the ship when it crashed, there was some data leakage between the ships computer and the pods and bomb that went off…” Canvers stops, takes a breath. “It looks like the pilot attempted to jettison the pods and something malfunctioned causing the explosion.”

“Does Nasy know?”

“Yeah, he’s… he insists that something else had to have happened, that he knew the pilot and she wasn’t capable of doing that. He thinks there might have been someone else on the ship.”

  


********************************

 

They have a large room that has basically been set up as their command center. There’s monitors for each one of the security cameras at the entranceways. There’s monitors for the open bay that the ship and pods are housed in.

There’s also a long table in the center of the room where Sullivan and Alex sit with their laptops going through the pods coding line by line.

Whoever wrote the second lines of code did so in a rush at the last possible minute, “You’re sure you can’t think of anyone that would be able to do it?” Alex asks again and Nasy shakes his head.

“Once the coding was done they would have locked the pods systems so they couldn’t be tampered with, the only ones with access to the pods after that would have been their parents,” Nasy makes a face, like he knows he speaking ill of people he thought very highly of. “None of them could have done it.”

“I don't think in the long run it’s going to matter, is it? I mean whoever wrote this is already dead so…” Sullivan looks over at him and Alex knows what he’s thinking.

He’s thinking the same thing. This is _not_ a worthwhile endeavor for them.

“We’ll work through it until the end of the day,” he decides, they’ve got a list of things they need to be doing. This isn’t on the list and wouldn’t make it to the list regardless because it’s in the past.

There’s nothing they can do about the past.

 

********************************

 

“So Friday and Saturday?” Canvers asks suddenly from where he’s leaned back in the chair on the other side of Alex’s desk staring at the ceiling.

“Random days of the week?”

“For your weekend? And I kind of maybe promised Michael that I’d have you out of here by 5 on Thursday because of some dinner thing?” Canvers looks so confused, it probably mirrors the expression on Alex’s face.

“When did you talk to Michael? And why don’t I remember this conversation?” he knows he was tired last night, but he’d been fairly positive that Canvers and Nasy had left _before_ he went and changed.

“Nasy gave him my cellphone number for questions, because he apparently lost his again and the General has him on a strict one cellphone replacement a year plan now so until he wheedles his way into a new one…”

“Max wants to have dinner for reasons I guess,” Alex says, there’s approved background checks on Kyle and Maria, two out of four isn’t bad for not even being 8 hours since the request was submitted. He’ll likely have the ones for Noah and Liz back in the morning. “How do you feel about having the human ears talk with Liz, Kyle, Maria and Noah?”

“Isn’t that normally your thing? You know Nasy talks to the aliens and you talk to the humans?”

“I’ve never known the humans before. I grew up with three of these guys, and I’m fairly sure I’ve met Noah a few times but the other three are going to raise some conflict of interest flags and I’d rather you have the talk with them and not raise those flags. I’ll be in the room in case it tries to go sideways,” he rubs his hand over his face, he’s still exhausted. But Friday is only like two days away.

He can make it.

“Besides Liz apparently already knows, so she can probably help convince the others that we’re not nuts.”

 

********************************

 

Canvers drags him out of his office at five, “you have someone actually waiting at home for you sir, you’d think you’d want to be the first one out of the building,” he mutters as he’s directing Alex out the doorways, throwing a wave at Barrows on the way.

“I was just working on…”

“Everything you were working on will still be there in the morning,” Canvers says firmly.

“Did Nasy already leave? I don’t remember him going,” Alex glances at the empty backseat.

“I had Whithers take him back to the motel, he has firm instructions that he’s not to bring Nasy back here until the morning. You’d think for a race that apparently had space travel and gestation and incubation pods and all the other crazy shit we’ve dealt with over the years that he’d have figured out that the hallucinations and deliriousness were being caused by the fact that he hasn’t actually slept in like four days.”

“You know I’ve been driving since I was sixteen,” Alex says.

“I’m not sure I like where this conversation is headed sir.”

“You don’t get paid to drive me around Sergeant, I can drive myself, you know.”

“See I might have been convinced to let you have the freedom to drive yourself back and forth,” Canvers starts, “But we just found out today that there might have been someone else on the ship that crashed, that actually _caused_ the crash on purpose, tried to kill those kids before they even had a chance to experience life on this planet.”

“It’s been over 70 years since the crash,” Alex says. “Over 20 years since they came out of the pods, No one has come for them in all that time. I think it more likely that whoever it was either died in the crash or believes the pods were destroyed in the crash.”

“You and I both know we’re not going to get that lucky. Chances are they did the same thing as Nasy, once they didn’t open right away they moved onto more fruitful endeavors and by the time they came back the pods were open and the kids were gone.”

Alex sighs, because he knows Canvers is right, but he really wants him to be wrong in this one case.

“You know I kind of figured I wouldn’t have to lie to Michael anymore once they were read in, I really wish we would stop learning stuff that I can’t share.”

 

********************************

 

“So Liz Ortecho?” the General says in their conference call on Thursday morning. Alex sits up straighter because Liz is the only background check not back yet; he got Noah’s approval Wednesday right before he left. He really doesn’t want to have the talk twice. That would be an annoyance that might actually drive him over the edge.

“What about her?” Alex asks carefully. He’s trying to think if Liz has said something that might be considered a flag, she was working up in Denver before coming back to Roswell. He would have thought she would have had some sort of clearance just based on the type of research his little bit of digging had told him she was doing.

It not being the first one back was actually quite surprising.

“Her clearance is fine, I know that look on your face,” the General says. He looks tired on Alex’s screen, he hasn’t asked about any of the other teams in the field currently, he wonders if one of them is giving the General sleepless nights.

“So what’s the hold up?”

“She’s back in Roswell so they dug a little deeper into her family then they did when she was in Colorado and…”

Alex leans back in his chair and doesn’t think about the implications of what this could mean for Liz and her dad.

He grew up in the Ortecho home, they spent more time bouncing from Liz’s kitchen to Maria’s kitchen to Kyle’s kitchen (never his kitchen because his mom was gone and his dad was no one he would subject his friends to).

“Anything we can do?”

“Pull back the request and read her in on her original clearance, it’s still good. But Captain,” the General stares directly into him, “this is something she needs to deal with before her clearance comes up for review again. Because it goes up for review, she won’t be granted and her dad will get swept up and out.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Alex says quietly.

That should be a fun conversation.

 

********************************

 

He brought clothes with him because he knows what his days have been like and if he’s going to be on time for this thing that Max is doing it’s going to mean leaving from the secured building and not going home, changing and going back.

That’s an ineffective use of his time.

So he changes into jeans and a flannel, pulls on some boots and leaves his uniform hanging in his office to take home later.

Perkins and Whithers drop him off on their way to the motel chattering the whole way about possibly going out for a drink after they eat.

“Be responsible kids, don’t make me come bail you out of jail,” he says as he climbs out, holding the door for Whithers to take his spot in the front.

“Where’s the fun in that dad,” Perkins laughs at him.

“Have fun Captain,” Whithers tosses him a two finger salute and Alex laughs, shutting the door as he walks up to the house.

Max has a nice house, being a Sheriff’s deputy must pay better then he figured or Max is mortgaged to the hilt.

“Was beginning to think you weren’t going to make it,” Michael opens the door just as he comes up on the porch, he has a beer in one hand and pulls him in for a kiss with the other.

“Well hello to you too,” Alex says.

“Alex is here,” Maria calls, as Michael slides an arm over Alex’s shoulder and leads him into the house, kicking the door closed with a practiced kick. “Can we eat now?”

“Were you guys waiting on me? You didn’t have to do that.”

“Max wanted a family dinner, can’t exactly do that if everyone isn’t here,” Michael’s lips brush his ear and Alex thinks of two days off and having Michael to himself and curses Max for not waiting until any _other_ weekend to want to do this.

 

********************************

 

The food is good so Alex knows that either the ability to cook fantastic food is an alien thing or Michael spent a good deal of the day with Max getting things ready. Michael keeps one arm over the back of Alex’s chair and Alex catches Maria more than once watching them with eyes that would likely be in the shape of hearts if she were a cartoon character.

When the food is mostly gone everyone stays at the table, talking and laughing; beers and soda’s in most hands, though Alex thinks that Isobel and Liz are splitting a bottle of white wine between them.

The seating is interesting and leads to more questions than answers in regards to the Liz, Max, Kyle issue. Liz is sitting smack in the middle of them, and while they’re both leaning towards her they’re actually talking to one another.

Everyone else is scattered, Maria next to Kyle, Isobel and Noah leaning into one another much. It’s loud, a bit much in some regards and Alex thinks he might have to take a minute to himself, regain his equilibrium. This is why he doesn’t spend a huge amount of time in places with lots of people and lots of noise.

His phone goes off, the shrieking high pitched alarm that indicates that there’s been an attempted security breach and his heart stops for the briefest of milliseconds even as he’s coming to his feet and hitting the key code that will answer it.

“Barrows report,” he says and the whole room goes quiet, he’s not paying attention to it right now.

“Attempted breach at door A2,” Barrows says.

“Are we still secure?”

“Still secure, though they’re still trying to gain access, Sullivan?”

“They’re using an old version of the lock break program we used in Instanbul,” Sullivan says, Alex can hear the clattering of keys as Sullivan types furiously.

“We changed all those protocols, they shouldn’t be able to gain access using that.”

“Well they’re trying anyway,” Sullivan says.

“I’m sending Perkins and Whithers to you right now,” Canvers interjects, when the alarm goes out it goes to all of them, “Nasy and I are on the way to the base.”

“Jesus, they’re going to overload the system before we get the doors secure,” Barrows says, Alex can hear both Sullivan and Barrows typing and he realizes what their prospective intruder is attempting.

“Stop!” he barks and the sounds of typing ceases, _all_ sounds cease and he turns slightly to see that the entire table is staring at him.

He knows what their dessert conversation is going to be now.

“They’re trying to get _you_ to overload the system,” he says evenly, “if you overload it from within all the door locks will go into open mode and have to be manually resecured. Barrows, secure the door they’re attempting to breach _first_.”

“They could just move to another door,” Barrows says even as he starts typing.

“Sullivan can secure the other doors all together once that door is secured.”

“On it sir,” Sullivan says and Alex can visualize the screens in his head, if he looks down he knows his fingers will be moving like he’s typing. He’s faster, he should be there doing this. But Sullivan is good, he’ll get it locked down, just like he knows Barrows is good and he’ll secure the first door and let Sullivan handle the rest.

“Don’t move too fast or we still run the risk of an overload.”

“Got it sir, hey how’s your dinner party going?”

“I know exactly what they’ll be talking about over dessert now,” Alex says. “Barrows?”

“Door A2 is secure, Sullivan?” There’s silence for about two seconds.

“All doors secure, sir.”

“We’re here sir,” Perkins says, “we’ll come to you.”

“Canvers wait for us, don't go in until we get there.”

“You think they’re going to be waiting for us?” Canvers asks, there’s a tone in his voice that sounds like he’s really hoping for some hostile forces to be lying in wait.

“I think we don’t need to be inviting any trouble.”

There’s a sharp tap at the door and Max pushes away from the table and Alex jerks his head in an affirmative motion to answer it.

There’s Perkins and Whithers, Perkins with her hair in a ponytail instead of the bun. Neither one in uniform so likely they were enroute to get that drink they were talking about in the car before getting redirected.

Michael comes to his feet and stops Alex with a hand on his arm when he goes to greet them.

“I guess this means we don’t get our weekend?”

“Keep the faith, this could be some horrible computer glitch and I’ll be back in time for dessert,” Michael rolls his eyes at him.

“I’ll bring home a piece of pie for you to eat later.”

 

 

********************************


	12. Chapter 12

**Unseen Flight 12/?**

 

 

The ride back to the base is filled with tension, just by a glance Alex can tell that Perkins and Whithers are in much the same mindset as Canvers.

Ready to kick some ass if necessary, and take names later.

“Barrows?”

“They haven’t tried to access any other of the other doors, I’ve got Sullivan going through the surveillance feeds to see if we can get a clear shot of our mystery guest,” Barrows says.

“Pull the last couple of days, if they made the attempt that means they’ve likely been surveilling the building.”

They pull into the spot right next to Canvers and Perkins kills the engine as Alex opens the door.

“Sorry sir,” Canvers says, he sounds apologetic which Alex waves off because it’s not like they could have known this would happen.

“At least they waited until after we ate, I’d be more pissed if I hadn’t,” Alex says. “Though I’m missing dessert so I reserve the right to be pissed off again in about 30 minutes.”

 

********************************

Alex has one group go door to door to verify security. The computer says they're secured but computers are not infallible and can be hacked as he well knows.

The other group scans the security footage. They find their mystery guest easily enough on the feeds, she hadn’t come close enough to the building on any of the other visits to set off alarms, she just got close enough to be able to see their coming and goings.

But this isn’t their first rodeo, they have cameras on each of the doors of course, because that’s standard operating procedure. But they also have them set up on random buildings surrounding theirs because they’re all paranoid about security. She must have started watching _after_ they were installed or she would have noticed them.

“She looks young,” Canvers says, he’s staring at the picture with narrowed eyes. “Couldn’t possibly be our mystery fifth.”

“Shapeshifter,” Nasy says with a shrug, “she is likely a shapeshifter, and as you know they can take on any form they choose of any age they choose.”

“Post the picture, see if any of the other teams have come into contact with her.”

“This is likely a new form, do you think she’ll have taken that chance?” Nasy asks.

Alex shrugs, “better to ask and have the answer be no, then to not ask and have her actually having come into contact with one of the other teams.”

 

********************************

 

“So do you think that she’ll try again?” the General asks.

“I think next time she’ll take a more direct approach,” Alex says, “and I think we need to head it off at the pass and maybe set a trap of our own making.”

Canvers perks up where he’s hunched over a tablet scrolling through surveillance footage.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Probably not, but short of shipping everything to the secure bunker when we’re not ready and running the risk of someone trying to snatch it mid travel while it’s exposed…”

“If you want more eyes let me know, I have a team ready to go out that I don’t have a firm location for yet and they’re itching for something to do.”

“Plus they want to see the space ship live and in person.”

The General laughs, “Son _I_ want to see the space ship in person and trust me if my schedule wasn’t hip deep in meetings after meeting I would already be there bothering the crap out of you and getting in your way.”

 

********************************

 

Alex gathers everyone, including his six new airman who look even more like children playing dress up then they usually do when they’re sitting next to his team of eight for direct comparison.

“So we’re going to set a trap,” Canvers says, the monitors have the pictures from the surveillance camera, the woman mostly stays the same in appearance so if she is a shapeshifter this is the form she prefers above all others.

“Let’s get the pods secured first, somewhere out of the way where they’re not in open view and not trackable if someone gets in and knows how to find them via their energy signals,” Alex says.

“I can just power them down,” Nasy says, he’s tapping a pen against the table, “I’d rather not remove the power sources completely while we’re still data mining.”

“Are you still getting useable data from them?”

“A little, but just enough that I’d rather wait for us to finish then run the risk of not being able to power them back up, plus if something happens to one of the three… It might be a good idea to at least have the pods in a state where we can use them if need be.”

Alex ignores the fact that Nasy is thinking about something bad enough happening to Michael, Max or Isobel that the pods would be a suitable environment to house them in.

“So that leaves the ship,” Barrows says.

The giant elephant in the room that can’t be as easily hidden.

“There’s two power sources, correct?” Alex asks and Nasy beams at the direct proof that Alex actually _reads_ all the documentation that Nasy copies him instead of just the data codes.

“Yes.”

“And we’re not worried about not being able to get the ship to power back up?” Daniels asks.

“I know how to maintain my ship,” Nasy says, just a hint of the fact that he finds that offensive in his voice, “if it gets powered down correctly and then we remove the power sources one at a time then we’ll have no problem putting them back in and powering it back up.”

“I’m just saying it’s been 70 plus years since you did any maintenance,” Daniels mutters. “My car at home if I don’t take it in every six months for an oil change and a tune up it makes strange noises, I can’t even imagine what it would sound like if I left it buried in the desert for 70 years.”

“Well your car is ancient but is not also an unidentified flying object from an alien planet, so differences have to be allowed,” Canvers says.

“So what’s our plan Captain?” McDonald asks, probably trying to steer the conversation away from Daniels car and back to the task at hand.

Alex glances around the table at his six airman, Jesus they’re so young.

“Which one of you is the biggest lightweight?” he asks and he watches as they all eye each other before five fingers point at Waterstone who flushes the brightest red and stares at the table.

“I don’t think I can be called a lightweight if I just don’t like to drink,” he mutters.

“This is a one drink maximum assignment,” Alex assures him.

“He’s going to need to be able to act drunker then one drink would probably do,” Canvers says, he knows exactly where Alex is going with his train of thought.

“I can do it,” Waterstone says face still tinted red but perked up now with interest, “I did a couple of plays in high school this’ll be just like then except you know my mom won’t be watching me from the front row.”

“How do we want to play it? We don’t want him to give away what exactly we’ve got here so…” Barrows says.

“She already knows we’ve got something of interest, we just need her to think it’s more easily accessible than it actually is,” Alex says.

“So we go back to business as usual?” Canvers asks.

“Business as usual, lockdown for 8 more hours. I’ll get the General to throw us another team, make us look like we’re patrolling a bit more for a couple of days but it’ll also allow us to give everyone a couple of days off, get some sleep, get us focused,” he looks around the table and they’re all looking at him.

He can see the exhaustion written into their faces, they’ll do whatever they need to but Alex needs them focused and alert and right now none of them are 100%.

“Next Friday,” he says, “that gives us enough time to both bait the trap but also make sure everything is secure so she can’t make it out of the building with anything if she manages to slip the net.”

 

********************************

 

Michael’s truck is parked in front but the cabin is dark when Canvers pulls up to it. In the backseat Whithers is snoring lightly and Perkins is still awake but looks to not be for much longer.

He glances at the clock and it’s just shy of 7am on Saturday morning, the sun is just starting to peek up over the trees. He’ll get Saturday and Sunday now that Friday was a total wash and he’s really hoping that he can convince Michael to stay in bed with him even though he’ll likely be passed out for at least 6 hours.

“You want me to come in?” Canvers asks quietly and Alex shakes his head.

“Go get some sleep Sergeant, I’ll see you guys at 7 am Monday,” Alex gathers up the laptop bag containing a laptop that he’s hoping to have no time to use, and the brace that he _will_ be using since he wants to make it into the cabin in one piece. “Buddy system,” he says as he opens the door and both Canvers and Perkins nod at him, “let’s not invite any trouble if we don’t need to.”

“Go get some sleep sir,” Canvers laughs softly, “spend some time with your boyfriend.”

Perkins winks at him from the backseat as he rolls his eyes, she makes no motion to move up front so he closes the door and waves them off.

They wait for him to make his way up the steps and push his key into the locked door, Canvers flashes his lights and they back away.

It’s quiet in the cabin, just the faint sound of the fan running in the bedroom and he secures the locks then secures the actual alarm system that he makes a mental note to show Michael how to arm and disarm.

He sets the bag down by the couch and meanders slowly toward the bedroom where he can see the faint outline of Michael curled up on his side in the bed and he smiles to himself. He lays the brace against the dresser and strips off his shirt, unbuttoning his jeans and pushing them down so they sit low on his hips. He sits on the corner of the bed gently trying his damnedest to not disturb things too much as he gets his boots off, drops his jeans to the floor and then detaches the prosthetic and slides the sock off.

He breathes a sigh and manages to get under the covers and curled up against Michael’s back, laying his hand on his hip and resting his forehead against his shoulder. He can feel his muscles relaxing as he just lays there, letting the contentment of being in a soft bed, of having Michael right there under his hands wash over him.

“I’m awake,” Michael mumbles.

“No you’re not,” Alex murmurs, pressing a kiss to his shoulder even as Michael shifts and rolls onto his back and can pull Alex tight up against him so he’s splayed half across his chest.

“Sleep first,” Alex says tilting his head up for a kiss that Michael sleepily reciprocates. “Sex later.”

 

********************************

 

When Alex wakes Michael is sitting up in the bed next to him, earbuds in listening to something on his laptop. He rubs his forehead against the side of Michaels leg where it’s resting and Michael combs his fingers through his hair absently.

He contemplates closing his eyes and going back to sleep but his stomach twists uncomfortably in hunger and he definitely needs to go the bathroom and probably brush his teeth.

He’s comfortable though, warm and content.

“I brought your crutches in here,” Michael says, fingers tracing absent patterns against his cheek. “You hungry yet? You growled at me earlier so I took that as a no.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, he still doesn’t want to move. It’s nice and quiet.

Michael closes the laptop and sets it on the table beside the bed, he slides down the bed so he’s facing Alex, presses soft kisses to his cheek and forehead and lips.

“Go to the bathroom, brush your teeth,” Michael smiles at him, “you’re still here and it’s past twelve so…”

“Weekend, two days, Canvers will pick me back up on Monday at 7,” Alex says, he still feels tired, but there’s an undercurrent of energy thrumming between them that almost makes the air feel electric.

He wants to stay in this bed all day, wants to make love to Michael wrapped in warm blankets and a secure house and know that no interruptions will be coming from any quarter except for if they’re wrong and their mystery guest tries another run at the building.

He closes his eyes and breathes; trying to gather enough energy to roll over and sit up and go into the bathroom to do what he needs to.

Michael cups his face in his hand, runs his thumb over his lips and it’s soothing and quiet.

“Okay,” Alex says and sits up, that takes more energy than he thought it would, so he just sits there staring absently at the door for a minute. When he looks down at him Michael has his head resting on his hand and is watching him with a smile curving his lips and eyes that are lit up with happiness. He wants to lay back down in the curve of Michael’s body and ignore any and all bodily functions clamoring for attention.

Michael grins at him and smoothly comes up to his knees, kisses his shoulder, his neck, bites his ear for good measure and then is off the bed.

“You’re a horrible tease,” Alex informs him as he swings his legs over the side of the bed, Michael holds out the crutches for him and waits for Alex to get up.

“It’s not teasing if I have every intention of following through on it,” Michael says as he saunters out of the room.

Alex has no real reply for that so he goes to the bathroom and firmly closes the door behind him.

 

 

********************************


	13. Chapter 13

**Unseen Flight 13/?**

 

They eat in the kitchen, Michael making up some scrambled egg thing that has ham and cheese and peppers in it, Alex would think he screwed up making an omelet and just improvised but he watched Michael do it on purpose so he knows better.

Michael sits as close to him as he can get without Alex actually being in his lap. He has both of Alex’s legs draped across his thighs, and he’s running gentle fingers over the edge of the stump. He would do this the few times they had sex in the Airstream as well, like he could draw out the pain and suffering and memories that were wrapped up in Alex losing part of his leg from just his touch alone.

He’s pretty sure Max is the healer not Michael so he knows he’s not actually able to do that.

He lays his fork down and reaches across the table for Michael’s other hand, turning his hand over so he can trace a line down the middle of his palm, the look on Michael’s face is intense.

“So I guess we’re done eating,” he says, he links their fingers together as brushes his lips against Alex’s knuckles.

“You weren’t even eating anything,” Alex points out, “and don’t even think about trying to carry me, we’ll make it there on three feet just fine.”

 

********************************

 

Michael has this seemingly innate talent for reducing Alex to pieces with just the barest of touches. Even when it was their first time and everything was awkward and messy and they didn’t care because they were together.

They were together and Alex thought his heart would explode with how much he loved him.

They’d been so young and naive, the brief moments they had together where Alex had thought they could do it.

That their seventeen year old selves could figure out how to get of Roswell and be together and not have to worry about Michael’s shitty foster family or Alex’s homophobic dad.

Michael is hovering over him, Alex has one leg looped over Michael’s to keep him from moving too far away. He probably doesn’t need do that, Michael doesn’t seem inclined to move any farther away then he needs to in order to grab condoms and lube.

Alex blames the exhaustion for not noticing them sitting out in plain view on the end table, like Michael had been prepping to have everything right at hand when the moment finally came for them to tumble back into bed.

He moans into the kiss when Michael finally gets a finger inside him, then two, three. He’s going to come before Michael even gets inside him and Michael must know that because he backs off and nips at his lips and grins at Alex’s nonsensical grumbles and swear words and ‘I’ll do it my fucking self, I swear to god Michael’.

“I’ll get you there sweetheart,” he murmurs against Alex’s lips.

Alex lets his fingers drag through Michael’s hair, tangling in the curls and tugging lightly as Michael shifts and moves and then finally after what feels fifty years but is likely only a matter of seconds later, _finally_ starts pushing into him.

Alex breathes, there’s always a moment of feeling like everything is just a bit too much, then that passes and it feels like everything is slotting into place.

Like the only place he ever needs to be is right there in the bed, under Michael with Michael inside him. His thumbs trace a path over Michael’s cheekbones as he stares at him, he wonders briefly before Michael starts moving if the love he feels for this man is visible in his eyes, on his face.

It has to be, he feels like his heart has been cracked open and everything he feels is written there for all and sundry to see. And it always has been.

He bites the words back for now, when he says them for the first time it’s not going to be in the middle of making love, it’s going to be in a quiet moment and Michael will believe him because he won’t have any reason not to.

 

********************************

 

He realizes right around the twelve hour mark that Michael is _actually_ intending on them spending the entire time wrapped up each other in bed.

He loses an entire hour curled on his side the two of them just staring at each other, his hands moving in soft strokes against Michael’s skin, Michael’s hands on him. There’s no real intent behind the touching, the desire banked for the moment, but the need to be touching each other… that doesn’t seem to ever fade.

It’s intoxicating, the freedom to just reach out and know Michael will be reaching back. That if he were to lean forward two inches for a kiss that Michael would meet him in the middle and kiss him back.

“I love you,” he murmurs between one breath and the next and the smile on Michael’s face is breathtakingly beautiful.

Michael leans forward and Alex meets him halfway, Michael breathes, “I love you too,” against his lips and Alex smiles.

 

********************************

 

Michael is already out in the kitchen when he wakes up on Sunday morning, Alex takes the opportunity to get on his crutches and take care of things in the bathroom.

There’s a wet towel hanging over the back of the door already which means Michael has already been through the shower and Alex takes his time.

He aches in all the best ways and he can’t seem to stop smiling which he needs to get a handle on or he’s going to freak his guys out.

He’s staring at himself in the mirror, trying to decide if he wants to shave or just wait until Monday morning.

Michael taps on the door, then slides in making sure to close it quickly so all the warm air doesn’t escape. He has a coffee cup in one hand that he sets on the corner of the sink before he pushes up close to Alex crowding him against the sink. Hands on his hips he presses open mouthed kisses to Alex’s shoulder and Alex relaxes against him.

Tilts his head to one side and sighs when Michael rests his forehead in the curve of his neck, his arms wrap tight around Alex’s waist and just holds him there.

 

********************************

 

They pass the Sunday lazily lounging on the couch, making out like the teenagers they really weren’t allowed to be. Michael has something playing on the TV but Alex doesn’t pay any attention to it. He doesn’t think Michael is either.

He answers the group text that consist of him, Canvers and Barrows to assure them that he’s both okay and not needing assistance of any sort.

Mother hens, all of them.

He sends a separate text to Canvers to schedule some time Monday afternoon with Liz, Kyle, Maria and Noah to have the human ears talk. He’s not sure how long it’ll take, but he’d like to get it over with as quickly as possible before they run the risk of Maria and Noah figuring it out based on just the context clues alone.

“We’re having the talk with Liz, Kyle, Maria and Noah tomorrow,” Alex says when Canvers confirms.

“So you want me to find somewhere else to be?” Michael asks, there’s no tone to his voice but Alex is cuddled up along his side with Michael’s arm over his shoulder and he _felt_ the way he stiffened there slightly. Like he’s just _waiting_ for Alex to kick him out.

“I’d like for you and Max and Isobel to hang out on the porch with Nasy until we’re done so if there’s any questions we can deal with them as a group,” Alex says quietly, Michael relaxes and brushes his lips against Alex’s temple.

“Someday you’re going to tell me the story of how you met Nasedo.”

“It’s really not that interesting a story,” Alex mutters. “He needed an officer and I was the only one him and Canvers could agree on.”

“I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than that.”

“Not really,” Alex says. He makes a mental note to never leave Canvers and Michael alone in a room together ever.

 

********************************

 

Canvers arrives promptly at 7am on Monday morning, Nasy and Whithers are already in the backseat and Perkins is moving from the front to the back when he comes out.

Michael had made him coffee to go and he’d only had time for a bagel since Michael had decided to join him in the shower.

And he can tell from the smirk on Canvers’ face that the fact that he was kissed breathless by the front door before Michael let him leave has not gone unnoticed.

“Have a nice weekend sir?” he asks with a laugh and Alex would flip him off but he’s in uniform and that’s just not done.

“Let’s go Sergeant,” Alex says with an arched eyebrow and what he’s really hoping is his ‘don’t fuck with me’ voice but probably isn’t even close based on the smirk remaining.

“Barrows called this morning, Lieutenant Davies and his boys made it into town at about five this morning.”

“So we’re still on track for this weekend, good,” Alex nods to himself.

It’ll be nice to have some semblance of a normal schedule while they try and lull their mystery guest into thinking their security is much more lax then it really is.

He’s not looking forward to the days after they bait their trap waiting for her to trip it. They’ll be long hours until it’s done, he should start prepping Michael for that now.

 

********************************

 

“Ms. Ortecho is bringing Ms. DeLuca and Mr. Valenti out to your cabin at six,” Canvers says, “I’m fairly sure she knew exactly why she needed to bring them and she said she’d handle getting them there, then she hung up on me.”

“What about Noah?”

“Nasy said he spoke to Isobel? And she’s going to get him out there,” Canvers sits down in the chair across from his desk and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I’m going to sound like an idiot, are you sure you can’t give them the talk and I can just nod along at the appropriate places, I won’t tell anyone.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Alex says absently, he’d be more invested in the conversation if Canvers hadn’t already tried to have this same exact one at least three times already. “You’ve heard me give it multiple times, I’m sure you’ve got it committed to memory by now.”

Canvers sighs, “It just sounds so much better coming from you, I think it’s the bars that make you sound really official and all.”

“You know I really don’t have any set in stone speech, right? I just kind of wing it depending on how receptive they are when the conversation starts and how likely they are to pull or have a gun on their person.”

Canvers just looks at him and Alex would laugh but if he does he’ll be dragging Barrows along with him and then he’ll _definitely_ be the one giving the talk while Barrows hides on the porch with Nasy and a beer.

“You’re going to be fine, just use it like a public speaking exercise.”

“I know you intended for that to make me feel better, but I absolutely _hated_ that class and it doesn’t make me feel better.”

 

********************************

 

Everyone is congregated on the porch when Alex arrives with Canvers and Nasy in tow. Michael must have either gone out and bought more beer or someone brought some with them because they all have bottles in hand except for Isobel who has a glass instead.

“Should we have mentioned that they should be sober for this?” Canvers asks. “I mean I thought it would have been the sort of thing that went without saying but…”

“Well maybe it’ll go easier this way for you,” Alex says. “They’ll all be kind of buzzed and less inclined to argue with you about the fact that aliens don’t exist.”

 

********************************

 

Canvers gets all the humans situated in the living room and Alex can already see the questions on Noah and Maria’s faces about why Isobel, Max and Michael are staying on the porch with a person that neither of them know.

He knows Liz knows, Kyle seems to know as well since he seems relaxed and not at all concerned about why they’re there.

“So aliens are real,” Canvers says, just abruptly spits it out like the faster he says the word alien in a sentence the easier everything else will come. Alex could tell him that doesn’t work but Canvers is already barreling ahead with the rest of what they know.

About Antar and the civil war that led to 200 ships carrying 327 survivors making a bee line for Earth and safety.

That Max and Isobel and Michael are counted among those 327 survivors.

Maria is just blinking like dots are connecting for her at a rapid fire pace; from the expression on his face Noah is going to be the hardest to convince.

“So you’re trying to tell me that my wife is not human,” Noah says, he doesn’t ask; he just says the words slowly, like they’re a rabid animal that might bite him if he’s not careful.

“No,” Canvers says.

“Huh.” Noah is silent after that, just a stunned look on his face as he sits there in silence. Liz looks over at him then back at Alex and Alex isn’t quite sure what she expects him to do. There is a processing time and he hasn’t gone for a gun so this is going far better than 40% of the times they’ve had to do this.

“So are you guys like part of Project Shepherd or something? Because I kind of thought your dad was like investigating things by himself but…” Kyle waves his hand in the air and Alex just stares at him blankly, he looks over at Canvers and hopes his face doesn’t have that same horrified expression on it.

“I’m sorry,” Alex starts slowly. “Could you repeat that?” His phone is already in his hand and Canvers is on his feet probably ready to go get Nasy and burn a fucking bunker down.

“Um, your dad approached me to help him out with a military project called Project Shepherd, because it was apparently some family legacy and he was running it with my dad at some point and…” Kyle’s eyes are wide and the looks he’s exchanging with Liz are panicked. “I kind of maybe told him to go fuck himself, I think he’s got Max’s partner, Jenna working with him now. Maybe, I don’t know for sure…”

Maria and Noah look like they don’t have a clue what the hell is being talked about so thank god for small miracles.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Alex swears, he hits the speed dial for the General and Canvers is at the door gesturing for Nasy.

“Is it going that badly son?” the General asks.

“How does my father still have access to Project Shepherd?” Alex asks in a very quiet, even voice; he wants to scream.

“He doesn’t,” the General says, “Project Shepherd was closed down after we took in Nasedo; Project Orion took its place, you know this.”

“Yes,” Alex nods, he forces himself to breathe because passing out would be bad right now. Project Orion is theirs; they protect those refugees from Antar needing it, eliminate the refugees from Antar that are attempting to recreate their war on Earth.

“Yes I am aware of this, but I also have someone telling me that my father approached him about Project Shepherd and that project and all its records should be secured with our people.”

His dad shouldn’t have those records, Alex has seen all the stuff that Project Shepherd had accumulated for the brief time it was in operation. _None_ of that stuff was in the bunker when he was a kid.

The stuff he’s seen is nightmare inducing in some ways. He would remember seeing it when he was a child if it had been there.

“Jesus,” the General mutters, “we do have the originals son, that doesn’t mean that your dad or more likely his dad made copies of everything we originally had.”

“Okay,” Alex lets out a breath and looks around the room, at everyone there just staring at him, waiting for him to tell them what’s happening, what they need to do.

Michael is hiding his hand, has been likely since Alex mentioned his father. Jesse Manes is getting within 5 feet of Michael over Alex’s dead body.

“I’ll take care of it,” he says.

“No you won’t Captain; you’ve got other priorities at the moment,” the General says firmly. “I’ll set Lieutenant Davies and his boys on your dad, they’ll need something to keep them occupied while your guys bait the trap and this way it keeps your dads eyes off of you for the moment.”

“I want it shut down if he does have access to Project Shepherd records that presents an imminent danger to Michael, Max and Isobel and the others if he can connect the right dots to them.”

“I will authorize them to use whatever means necessary that don’t actually result in one of them committing murder.”

“I’d probably even be okay with that option if it meant everyone else was kept safe.”

“You say that but you don’t really mean that,” the General says.

And he knows that’s true, Alex has a moral compass that he tries very hard to live by. That doesn’t include murdering people in cold blood unless the situation merits it.

Though he would happily burn everything his father has built down to ashes. And the General would do very little to stop him doing that.

 

********************************

 

“That could have been a lot worse,” Canvers says after Max has left with Liz, Kyle and Maria in tow, after Isobel has led a very quiet Noah away. Alex makes a mental note to call him in the morning and offer up talking services or a therapist. They have several in the know.

They all signed the papers, a basic agreement to not disclose what they now know.

“Remember Haiti?” Alex asks, he’s drinking water and trying to quell the panic of his dad having access to Project Shepherd documents. He wishes he were drinking something stronger, it would probably actually work then.

“Haiti?” Michael asks, he’s sitting next to Alex on the couch, arm over the back. He looks relaxed but Alex can tell from the way he’s holding himself that he’s not.

“Haiti,” Nasy nods, “Haiti is the reason that we do background checks before we tell any of the human family members or friends.”

Michael looks at him and Alex shrugs.

“Background checks aren’t a full proof way of weeding out those people that are going to freak out and pull a gun, but they can tell us if there is something in their background that indicates they might not be mentally stable or might have a history of violence.”

“Fiancé of one the first aliens that Nasy brought us tried to kill her fiancé, Nasy and our Captain then Lieutenant when she was told,” Canvers says. “Captain did some sweet leg kick hand twist thing and disarmed her before she got a shot off. I think that was the first time that Nasy offered up his first born to him.”

“No, that was the one and only time he proposed,” Alex says leaning into Michael’s side, he’s really tired all of a sudden. “It’s been all the crazy shit he drags us into after that he offers up his first born.”

“I’m not sure I even want to know,” Michael says slowly.

“Not really important in the grand scheme of things,” Canvers says, “just now we do background checks on any of the humans who come into close proximity to one of our new charges. Weeds out a few of the crazy ones, not all of them but enough that it’s a basic requirement.”

 

********************************

 

The rest of the week is quiet, Alex spends it dealing with a half dozen phone calls from Maria and Noah wanting to know if they’d eaten something bad and hallucinated the whole Michael, Max and Isobel being aliens thing.

Then continuing phone calls from Noah where apparently the man was trying to convince himself to buy a gun, even though he didn’t want gun so he could protect Isobel if he needed to.

“I think Isobel can protect herself,” Alex says, the last thing he wants is a gun in untrained hands. That’s how things like Haiti happen.

 

********************************

 

Friday is quick to arrive, Waterstone leaves with Daniels and Carmichael in tow, he’s wired for sound and he looks quite frankly terrified, if there was any other way Alex would have chosen it.

But he also knows his guys. None of them can pull off innocent ingénue, not even Perkins.

“What do you think?” Alex asks when it’s just him, Barrows and Canvers in the room with the receiver.

“I think he’s going to need two beers to get his nerves settled,” Canvers says. “But I think he’ll get it done.”

“He wants to impress you,” Barrows says absently from where he’s leaning over his laptop. “He doesn't want to get sent back to base once we’re done here, if he could figure out where to go he’d request a permanent posting.”

“You could just tell him where to go to submit it,” Canvers says and Barrows looks up with a smirk.

“I could, but how do they figure out how to do things on their own if you don’t let them.”

Alex leans back in his chair and looks at them, Canvers’ eyebrows furrow as he tries to interpret whatever he’s reading on his face.

“So Cannon or Holloman? Pros, Cons, thoughts, concerns?”

“Seriously?” Barrows asks.

“I wouldn’t put it out there if I wasn’t serious.”

Canvers and Barrows exchange a look, they both turn back to him, identical grins on their faces which is almost as disconcerting as the fact “Cannon” comes out of both their mouths at the same exact time.

“I take it we’ve discussed this.”

“Well you know…” Canvers starts.

“We figured unless Mr. Guerin was up for moving that we would be settling down at a base as close to Roswell as we could get,” Barrows shrugs, “So it was either Holloman or Cannon and Cannon is a straight shot and has facilities already in place we could use.”

“Security is a little lax, but we can fix that up in a couple of days,” Canvers says.

“Are you taking trips to scope out real estate? I haven’t even submitted the request yet.”

“But we know it’s coming, so,” Canvers shrugs. “I’ve already got templates ready for support staff requests and requests to keep our six newbies provided they don’t blow tonight.”

 

********************************

 

The transmitter goes live the minute Waterstone goes into the Wild Pony. Alex hears Maria’s voice when Waterstone orders a beer and then it’s all rumbles of loud voices and louder music.

There’s an hour of boring conversation, of Carmichael murmuring things and Daniels probably holding back away from the two so as to not be spotted as a chaperone.

“It’s just so cool, you know,” Waterstone is saying when the music dies down a little for them to realize he’s actually chatting someone up. “I don’t get to really see any of it or touch it but just what I’ve seen.”

There’s a female voice, faint and quiet that they can barely make out, Wild Pony was definitely not the right place to try and do this to record.

But while they’re recording just because, it’s also nothing that would be admissible if it came down to it so the quality won’t end up really mattering.

“They’re going to move it all in another week or so,” Waterstone sounds so sad about it, “so I guess I’ll be going back to my regular job after that.”

“Alright buddy,” Carmichael intercuts loudly, “let’s get you back to the base before you start crying in your beer.”

“I’m okay,” Waterstone mutters, though he sniffles a little and Alex hides his smile behind his fingers, it probably doesn’t matter Canvers is laughing quietly and Barrows is just shaking his head.

“Sorry about him,” Carmichael is saying.

“It’s not a problem,” the voice is a young woman, slightly accented, not any voice Alex has heard before. Though something about the accent is familiar in a way where he’s sure he hasn’t heard _this_ voice but he’s definitely heard the accent before. “Have a nice night boys.”

Canvers’ phone rings and he hits the answer button and puts it on speaker.

“Bait set,” Daniels says.

“Alright, let’s pull everyone in and see if we can’t catch us a shapeshifting rat.”

 

********************************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am on vacation for the next week, without internet access or anything (kind of nervous truth be told). So longer chapter as an apology that the next one won't be up until 4/25.


	14. Chapter 14

**Unseen Flight 14/?**

 

Lieutenant Davies returns with his boys and a truck filled with items and documents that his father should not have had or even had access to.

It makes Alex almost irrationally angry, his father has been lifetime military from a line of lifetime military men and the fact that he’d taken it upon himself to continue running an unapproved operation using military information is just unconscionable.

“We seized his computers too,” Davies says, he sounds really self-satisfied. Alex wishes he’d been there to see the expression on his father’s face when he realized that they were going to take _everything_. “There’s a vein in his forehead that visibly throbs when he gets really pissed off.”

“I’m well aware,” Alex says. He’d seen that vein a _lot_ when he was a mouthy teenager.

“You want us to set the computers up somewhere so you and Sullivan can take a look at the data on them? Nichols is my Sullivan so if you want an extra set of hands…”

“Yeah, we’re going to have to kill some time anyway. Sullivan and Nichols can start going through the hard drive data and the others can go through everything else. The General was going to send over a list of all the items that were started out as Project Shepherd documents, we can cross reference and make sure we snagged everything or whether he might have another hiding spot somewhere.”

“He was so angry that I think he might have only had the one place he kept things, probably didn’t think it likely that after so many years anyone would even come looking for them.”

“But I also know my dad, he’s not stupid by any stretch of the imagination. Likely he has copies of whatever he deemed his most important data hidden somewhere else.”

 

********************************

 

They inventory everything and once all the documents are accounted for there’s still a table full of items that are definitely alien in nature that his dad must have found after he started running Project Shepherd again.

“Some of the pieces are fragments from the crashed ship,” Nasy says when they start going through the remainder, “But there’s other stuff that I don’t know where he would have gotten them.”

“I’m sure we don’t want to know where he got them,” Canvers says, “that way is sure to lead to nightmares for some of us.”

And is likely going to lead Alex into a dark web hole trying to figure out where alien tech is coming from and who is supplying it once they deal with their immediate issue.

Canvers is starting a new inventory list for the items not yet catalogued because they were never officially part of Project Shepherd. All the evidence to be sent off to the General to show that his father was running a program that not only had been shut down by the military and but also classified at such a level that his dad shouldn’t even have _known_ that there was a Project Shepherd.

Let alone have any of the items that they found in his bunker.

He foresees avoiding angry phone calls from his brothers in his near future, thankfully he’s got more important things to worry about.

He leaves Canvers, Nasy and Davies to sort through everything and goes to check in with Barrows and McDonald.

“So we’ve got the sensors set up,” Barrows says once he enters the computer room. “It’ll alert you, me and Canvers once they’re triggered.”

“How sensitive are they?”

“Sensitive enough that I’m having everyone avoid those entrances for now until we’re ready to move to our nesting point.”

“Sullivan’s got all the computers hooked up, cameras are feeding to both locations now and he just wants to give it 24 hours to make sure there’s no lag between the feeds,” McDonald says.

“Good,” Alex glances over at the cameras. “Once he’s satisfied start sending people out. Everyone reports back to their secondary locations and everyone in pairs at all times, I don’t want to give her any way to try and sneak her way in by picking off one of us.”

“Yes sir,” Barrows says, “you know this means you too, right?”

“I’m quite aware, Canvers is going to drive me home and I’m going to send Michael to Max or Isobel’s and come back here.”

He’s not quite sure how to explain what is happening to Michael, the fact that it’s classified is both a blessing and curse. Because now he has to come up with some plausible reason as to why Michael _needs_ to go stay with one of his siblings that is _not_ a shapeshifter attempting to steal the spaceship that Nasy came to Earth in.

 

********************************

 

“So what are you going to tell him?” Canvers asks, Alex has been trying to come up with something that Michael will buy and not ask too many questions about. So far he’s coming up completely blank.

“I’ve got no clue,” he admits, he’s not looking forward to this at all. Not only the conversation with Michael where he has to send him to Max or Isobel’s without actually telling him anything about why it’s so important that they stay in pairs and together.

But also the stakeout while they lie in wait for their mystery shifter to try and break into their warehouse.

Stakeouts only look fun on TV and movies, in real life they’re boring and tedious and if there was any way to hand it off to someone else he would gladly take the opportunity.

Canvers parks the car and follows him up the step to the cabin and inside. He feels entirely wrong footed when he walks into to see Michael sitting there with his bag already packed.

“Nasedo sent out a group text,” he says, probably reading the panic on Alex’s face.

“He did what?”

Michael holds out his phone and Alex takes it carefully and sees that Nasy had sent out a group text to not only Michael, Max and Isobel but also Liz, Kyle, Maria and Noah. Apparently he had found his phone or just been pulling a fast one on Canvers.

_stay together, pair off or groups no one goes anywhere alone_

“He also called us right before he sent it, told us there was super secret military stuff going on and that it was strictly a precautionary thing,” Michael drags his fingers through his curls, “I think him telling us that there was safety in numbers totally doesn’t _sound_ like a precautionary thing but he sounded kind of frazzled so no one called him on it.”

“Well this is anti-climatic,” Canvers says.

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know, yelling, maybe a thrown glass or two. Definitely an argument over how he can protect himself and all that jazz,” Canvers waves a hand at Michael. “I feel oddly cheated that Nasy did an end run around us.”

Alex rolls his eyes at him and Michael laughs.

 

********************************

 

They drop Michael off at Max’s, Alex had kind of thought he’d go to Isobel’s but apparently further down in the group text they’d all decided to congregate at Max’s.

“I think Max just wants us all in one space,” Michael says from the backseat where he’s bent over his phone, “he’s kind of a mother hen.”

Canvers pulls up in front of Max’s house, the driveway is already filled with vehicles, so Michael must be the last one to arrive.

“I really thought you’d at least walk him to the front door,” Canvers says as they're pulling away. “You know, like a gentleman would.”

“Did you see everyone looking out the windows at us? No thank you,” Alex says, he got a kiss through a rolled down car window and 50% less teasing then he would have if he’d walked him to the front door.

 

********************************

 

Alex stands by his statement that stakeouts are boring, they’re also likely to give him high cholesterol and totally increase his chances of having a heart attack by the age of forty if the amount of junk food scattered around them is any indication.

“Did you literally buy every piece of junk food the store had?” Barrows is asking in amazement. “You couldn’t buy just one bag of baby carrots or a couple of salads for us to fight over?”

“It’s a stakeout, we need stakeout food,” Whithers says firmly.

“I can actually feel my arteries clogging by the second,” Canvers mutters.

It’s too late to send anyone out without drawing notice that they’re still there and just moved one building to the left.

“Maybe she’ll be the type to jump in as soon as she sees no one report in the morning,” Alex says, he doesn’t think they’ll be that lucky.

“I hope so, this building only has two bathrooms. And Whithers and Farrell only bought one package of the good toilet paper.”

 

********************************

 

The hours tick away slowly, at least they’re not completely dark so there’s still internet which means phone games and computer games, and Alex still able to text Michael.

While Alex deals with a lot of ‘I’m bored’ texts and ‘I might actually kill Max by the time this is done’ texts they go over and over the layout of the building and where everyone should be situated. Finalizing their plans, making sure everyone is armed.

The goal is not to kill her, it’s to neutralize her as a threat and if that means a bullet to the shoulder or leg then to get her down then they’ll take it.

But they also won’t take any chances, if it looks like she’s going to get out with anything she didn’t expressly enter with… well they all know to take the shot and make it count.

 _Please don’t kill Max, my reach only goes so far, plus I like you not in prison orange_

_yeah, orange isn’t really my color_

 

********************************

 

When the alarm trips it startles every single one of them, because it had been dead silent except for the beeping from Sullivan’s arcade game and McDonald’s soft snores.

Alex hasn’t had a text from Michael in over four hours but it’s also 2 am so he figures it's likely Max sent everyone off to bed like a good overprotective dad.

“Fucking fuck,” Barrows swears, Alex slides his chair over and doesn’t admonish him for swearing in front of the youngsters, he blinks and goes for his phone even though it won’t make a difference.

It’s not going to change anything.

Because there on that screen, with blood on his lip and his hands held up is Michael, Canvers’ hands are heavy on his shoulder keeping him in the chair as they watch them file in.

Michael, Max, Isobel, Liz, Kyle, Maria, Noah.

All of them bleeding in some way, Liz has tears on her face and there’s so much anger in Isobel and Maria’s faces that Alex is actually a little terrified of them. _They’re_ likely more terrified of the armed men with guns surrounding them, and of the petite redhead with a gun who looks like she’s having the time of her life as she pushes his dad into the room in front of her.

“She’s not working alone,” Davies mutters, “Jesus Christ we didn’t even have a whiff of anyone working with her through any of our usual channels.”

“Mercenaries of some sort,” Alex says, Davies nods next to him. Though he also knows they’ll be going through backdoor channels after this is all done to figure out where these guys came from, how they got into town and how absolutely _none_ of them knew they were there.

It reeks and they don’t have enough places for there to be holes that aren’t going to mean someone they know and trust is the one trickling information out.

“Ten in the room with her, all armed,” Canvers says.

“Likely more outside, she’s probably got the bulk of them with her to control them right now, she’ll send them away to guard the doors in,” Alex says and they watch as she does just that, it leaves one guard back with her as the rest file out.

“Go, take them out, try to make as little noise as possible, they’re likely wired up so no chatter on our comms until they’re all down,” Alex orders. “If you get a shot at her take it, clean or not, we’ll deal with casualties later.”

It leaves him Canvers and Sullivan. Though it also leaves a glaring hole of where someone who should be piping up with comments and concerns should be.

“Where the fuck is Nasy?”

 

********************************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I didn't watch the finale last night. I had fears and decided to take some Nyquil to try and get over this post Vacation cold and passed out instead. I opted this morning to go into the Alex Manes tag on Tumblr to see either how good or how bad it was and... well I guess I should say I was surprised but I was really not. I'm not losing hope, I'm here for #malex until the bitter end, but geesh louise if that was the way the series ended if we hadn't gotten renewed? And they were happy with it? And thought we would be satisfied with it??? Ugh.
> 
> So this is AU, I think everyone knows that, but so alternate universe. Likely anything I write in RNM will be AU because, well reasons...
> 
> Also, sorry about the cliffie? The next chapter is a doozy and I had to cut it somewhere? *ducks behind a brick wall*, you know for safety.


	15. Chapter 15

**Unseen Flight 15/?**

 

They can’t find Nasy on any of the monitors.

“He’s hiding in the ship, I just know it,” Canvers mutters, “he’s going to pop out like some demented jack in the box and scare the shit out of everyone.”

“He can’t be hiding in the ship, the ship has no power and he has no way to get into it,” Alex says sensibly. Though he knows Nasy, he’d figure out a way.

“You know Nasy, he’d find a way,” Canvers states, because he knows Nasy as well.

“Two mercs secured,” Sullivan says, he’s been watching the teams’ slow trek through the building.

“The feed is secure, right? It’s not being broadcast anywhere but to us?” Alex asks, even though he’s confident in his and Sullivan’s abilities to secure their electronic shit they’ve already been blindsided once by the fact that she has hired guns on site that they hadn’t had a whiff about.

“It’s secure, I’ve already doublechecked,” Sullivan confirms.

“I count 14 left,” Canvers says.

“Two more down, four down,” Sullivan laughs a little, “I guess they work by the buddy system too.”

“They’re probably all prior military in some capacity,” Canvers says.

“Let me know when we’re clear,” Alex says. He stands slowly, rolls his shoulders. This is going to fucking suck and he knows it.

“What are you doing Captain?” Canvers asks, his tone is even, like he’s just asking about the weather. But there’s a trace of something else. Because he’s known Canvers for years now, he _knows_ that Canvers _knows_ what he’s doing.

“She’s nuts, and Nasy is in that room. If she threatens Michael or Max or Isobel in a physical manner more then she already has or her hired guns already have; Nasy is going to give her the batteries to the ship. Or he’s going to attempt to give her the batteries to the ship but he’s not going to be able to because we all know Nasy,” Alex looks at Canvers who looks directly back at him.

“One’s at Lackland with the General,” Canvers says.

“And the other?”

“Is hidden in what will be our new offices at Cannon,” Sullivan says. “I’ve got an alarm set to the room they’re locked in, it’s secure.”

“So we don’t need to worry about Nasy handing over the keys to the ship, so why are you going down there?”

And that’s the question isn’t it.

He’s going down there because it’s Michael and Max and Isobel. It’s Liz and Kyle and Maria and Noah even though Alex doesn’t know him that well.

It’s even his dad, though he wouldn’t be able to gather enough emotion to spit on him if he were on fire.

It’s Nasy in that room, who will likely give himself over to the other shifter in an effort to get just one of his three charges out of it.

“We’re never going to get a clear shot at her if I don’t,” Alex says.

Because all those reasons matter, and they’re all important to Alex himself. But the biggest one is that she knows they’re there waiting, she’s hiding in the shadows and cover of the ship and no one is going to be able to get a clear or clean shot if she stays there.

And Alex will never send someone in to do a job when he’s willing and quite capable of doing it himself.

 

********************************

 

“We’re secure,” Sullivan says quietly. The last two had made some noise when they went down, one got two shots off but no one was hit.

“So the Captain is going to do that thing he does,” Canvers says and Alex can hear the sighs over the comms which he thinks is a bit much even though yes, Canvers has missions in Istanbul and Afghanistan to back him up. “So try not to shoot him if he doesn’t move fast enough.”

“It’s going to be fine, I’m going to try and get her to send that last merc out of the room so it’ll just be a nice cozy family gathering, if someone could sweep him up?”

“Whithers and I are closest,” Perkins says, “we’ll get him when he comes out.”

 

********************************

 

Davies and Farrell meet him at one entrance to let him the building, he barely spares a glance at the mercs bound wrist and ankles with ties, they both look highly pissed off.

Davies is smirking and Alex knows it’s because of the steady diatribe that Canvers has going in their ears about all the ways that Alex is going to drive him into an early grave and how someone _else_ gets to explain to the General why Alex got shot _again_.

“I’ve literally only been shot once,” Alex says while he has the opportunity to speak because once he goes through the door he’s going to have to pretend that there’s not a group of crazy people talking in his ear, “and it barely counts since they said it was a graze at that. Now let’s try to put in our game faces and prove that we’re not a bunch of village idiots.”

Alex opts to go in through the back storage rooms, he doesn’t pass anyone else and he knows that Barrows, McDonald, Daniels and half of Davies boys are all up high trying to get a shot on the shifter. The other half of Davies boys and his newbies are all on doors and guarding mercs.

"So we might have a bigger issue," Sullivan says. Alex doesn't make a sound but Sullivan doesn't need the prompting to continue, "I can't get a good look, he's wearing a jacket but I'm almost 99% positive that she's got Sergeant Manes wired up."

Davies swears but Alex doesn't stop, just creeps into the back of the room where the ship is and everyone in there is very quiet. No one is talking, from his vantage point he can see what Sullivan is seeing. And taps twice on the earwig to confirm that yes his father has been secured into a bomb vest.

He can't see a control, which means it's not pressure trigger, she probably has a key code on a cellphone or a trigger in her pocket.

She's also holding a small handgun in her hand, which she's obviously never been through any gun safety courses as she's waving it around like it's a fucking stick.

Max twitches every time she waves it in their direction.

He can see her one lone remaining mercenary just standing off to the side, he looks supremely bored and even a little bit annoyed.

He takes a breath, releases and steps out from where he's been hidden from view, he tunes out Canvers grumbling in his ear and can tell the instant that he's seen by the panic on Michael and surprisingly enough his _dads_ faces.

“Alex,” Michael says with alarm and he’s waving his hands like he can make Alex go away. Alex ignores him, ignores all of them except for the shifter.

"You know this is a secure facility," he says quietly and the girl turns her gun on him, the merc doesn't even move. Alex doesn't raise his hands or make any other movement besides slow even steps forward.

He puts himself right directly in front of her.

She looks so young, but he knows better than most that looks can be deceiving.

"It doesn't work," she snarls at him, it turns her face ugly and she doesn't look as pretty and innocent as she first had on the cameras.

"Why doesn't it work?" she snaps at him, "I know it worked when you found it."

Alex moves past her, raps his knuckles against the ship, "You mean this ship, that's been buried in the desert since 1947? I admit it's impressive to look at, but it was buried in the desert for over 70 years, why on earth would you think it still worked?"

She snarls at him, inarticulate in her rage so he turns his attention to the mercenary who eyes him with interest but still doesn't raise his gun.

"How much is she paying you?"

"Not enough to deal with this horseshit, was supposed to be a simple snatch and grab nobody said anything about breaking into top secret military installations. I may be a lot of things but I'm not a fucking traitor," he mutters over the shifters screeching.

"You may want to check on your men then," Alex says evenly.

"None of them better be dead," he states and Alex gestures towards the door.

_"Secure it, nobody gets in until the shifter is down or secure," Canvers says._

"I'm not scared of you," she says when he turns his attention back to her. She's lying, Alex can see the faint tremor in the arm holding the gun, the stress lines on her face. But she's committed now, probably can't see any way to back down.

"Why don't you tell me what your demands are," Alex says. He keeps his voice calm and soft, he's been in worse situations then this. He keeps all his attention on her, ignores the others clamoring for his attention, ignores where Michael is actually being held back by Max and Kyle now.

"Demands? My _demands_?" she asks shrilly.

"You broke into a military installation, you have a gun pointed at unarmed civilians as well as the US military, you have a member of the US Air Force strapped into a bomb vest; right now that makes you no more than a terrorist on US soil. We don't negotiate with terrorists but why don't you tell me what your demands are and maybe we can figure out a way out of this that doesn't end with a bullet in your head."

Her mouth opens and shuts multiple times before she finally gets words out, "I want the ship," she says in a voice that cracks on the words. "I want the ship and I want Zan's son and I want to go _home_."

There's tears in her eyes, but they're also still dark and empty.

"That's all you want?" Alex says, he cocks his head to the side likely giving off the impression that he's thinking about her demands. Mostly he’s thinking about whether Zan’s son is Michael or Max, it doesn’t matter she’s not going anywhere with either one of them.

"Ignoring the fact that ship isn't going anywhere, and that consent would be needed before I would even think about allowing you to leave the building with anyone..." he pauses for a moment.

"Nasy why don't you tell the young lady why what she wants isn't possible."

It takes a moment for Nasy to come out from where he'd hidden himself, when he does he positions himself to Alex's left. Alex knows this puts him closest to where Michael, Max and Isobel are positioned.

"Nasy," Alex prompts, he doesn't look at him because he doesn't need to see Nasy's devastated face to know it's there.

"Antar is gone," he says finally. Alex can hear Isobel's hitching breaths, can just about feel Michael and Max’s denial. Apparently Nasy hadn’t gotten this far in his explanations as to how they all came to be on Earth.

"No," the girl says defiantly. "No, you're wrong."

"We were among the last ships to leave," Nasy says softly. "I saw it destroyed with my own two eyes. Antar is gone, this is our only home now."

"No," she says and she takes two steps forward. She has the gun up, pointed at Nasy, "He's lying, he's lying," she shrieks and she takes another step forward. Alex reaches out and grabs her arm, stops her and she stares at him utter rage and contempt written into every line of her face.

_"I have a shot, it's not clean," Barrows says._

"Take it," Alex says and he sees her rage settle into resolve and she goes to jerk out of his hold as Barrows takes his shot.

He's been shot before, once, a graze on his shoulder that took forever to heal and bled like a motherfucker.

This is a more direct hit, and he gets yanked away by Nasy's hands as her hand convulses on her gun and a shot rings out.

He concentrates on breathing and he can hear Canvers rattling off orders, Davies rattling off orders and they've got it. So he lets Nasy guide him to the floor and he loses time between one breath and the next, he doesn’t think he passes out but when he’s thinking and seeing again Michael is holding him and Kyle is pulling away the collar of his t-shirt and putting pressure on the wound.

"Looks like a through and through," Kyle says, he gets handed gauze pads from somewhere, Alex can't be bothered to figure out where.

He looks off to the right and the shifter is still alive and glaring at him, hands and ankles bound.

Perkins and Whithers are leaning over his father, unwiring the bomb vest and looking pissed off that they have to do that but also probably highly aware that they can't just leave it on him.

" _You're_ explaining this to the General," Canvers announces as he kneels next to Alex. "Because he said the next time that you got shot, blown up or lost a limb somebody was writing at least 50 pages of action report detailing why it happened and what we could have done to avoid it happening again and I'm not doing it."

 

********************************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So one chapter left of this story. :)
> 
> Thank you all for going on this wide ride with me and I hope you'll continue on with this series, when the next story (either a sequel or prequel I haven't quite decided which I want to focus on first) starts posting in a couple of weeks.


	16. Chapter 16

**Unseen Flight 16/16**

 

They take him to the hospital which he’s not happy about.

“You got shot,” Michael says, his voice is spooked and he still looks pale and shaken. “You got yourself shot on _purpose_.”

“Barrows is a fantastic shot, I knew he wouldn’t hit anything vital if he had to,” Alex says. “Plus it’s a through and through, Kyle could have just tossed a bandage on it and called it a day.”

“Have you had him checked for a concussion? I didn’t see him hit his head, but he could have done it before he waltzed in with his whole ‘this is a secure military installation’ horseshit,” Michael asks Canvers who snorts in response and is likely rolling his eyes for good measure.

“Multiple times, that’s just the Captain.”

 

********************************

 

“I’m sure there’s someone out there that needs this room much more than me,” Alex tries when he’s stitched up, bandaged up and then someone (not him) decides that he needs to be admitted for ‘observation’, Kyle just flips his file shut and looks at him. “I’m fine.”

Kyle continues looking at him with an expression that says he’s questioning whether or not he is capable of committing Alex for a psychiatric hold, then his eyes move over to where Michael is slouched in the chair on the other side of the bed looking like he’s settling in for a long wait.

“Make sure he doesn’t get out of the bed,” Kyle says and Michael nods though there’s also annoyance on every line of his face at the fact that he’s not only taking directions from Kyle but that he’s going to be following them.

“He’s not going anywhere, I’ll borrow handcuffs from Max if I need to.”

 

********************************

 

Alex doesn’t do well in hospitals, he hates the sounds and the smell and the fact that he can’t get out of bed and leave is just aggravating.

And Michael had taken his cellphone first thing so he can’t even text one of the guys to bring him his laptop to relieve the boredom and his prosthetic so getting out of bed and mobile is not happening without help.

He glances to the left where Michael has his prosthetic leaning up against the wall and is texting with someone on his phone.

“You have a spaceship in your super-secret building,” Michael says conversationally.

Alex sighs, because he wondered when they would get to this topic of conversation.

“Yeah,” he glances over at Michael and reaches out a hand, Michael wraps his fingers tightly around his. “It’s the ship Nasy came down in.”

“Should you be telling me that?”

“Probably not, but you’ve already seen it so no sense in telling you that that it was a mass hallucination.”

“Is that something you’ve had to actually convince people of before?”

“Nasy’s ship is the first one that we’ve actually seen in person,” he knows there’s others out there, all hidden away so if need be they can be used to flee Earth in the same manner that they’d fled Antar.

“Maybe if you ask nicely when Nasy gets the batteries back he’ll take you up for a ride in it.”

 

********************************

 

“Son what did I tell you was going to happen if we found ourselves in a situation like this again?” the General’s voice is loud and carries, it startles Michael to his feet before the General comes through the door with Davies right on his heels.

“We got her down and no one got seriously hurt,” Alex shrugs, it pulls on his stitches some and it takes some effort to make sure it doesn’t show on his face.

“Funny, I somehow still am seeing someone in a hospital bed.”

“I told them I was fine.”

The General snorts then turns his attention to Michael, “you must be Mr. Geurin, Nasedo’s already introduced your siblings but he said you were sitting on the Captain to make sure he stayed here and didn’t check himself out against medical orders.”

“Uh, yeah?” Michael looks panicked.

“General Fitzgerald, Michael Guerin,” Alex waves a hand between the two, the General looks Michael up and down then nods once and refocuses his attention on Alex.

“We need to discuss your father and what we’re going to do with him.”

 

********************************

 

The short answer is his dad is getting booted one way or another. There’s a small part of him that thinks this is his dad and he doesn’t want to see the dishonorable discharge after all the time his father has spent serving.

But there’s another, larger part of him that says his father is a monster. Leaving aside everything that happened to Alex in his childhood and what he’d done to Michael, he was running a shutdown military op like it was still active, recruiting civilians to work it, probably recruiting other military members to it…

He knows his brothers are tied into Project Shepherd somehow, he hasn’t figured out how or where, but he knows they are.

And he’s going to figure it out.

 

********************************

 

Kyle comes by with his discharge papers and a box.

“Don’t you have nurses to do this normally?” Alex asks about the discharge papers, he’s not sure he wants to know what’s in the box and why Kyle had deemed it important enough to bring to him.

“Yeah, but I was coming this way anyway,” Kyle shrugs.

“What’s in the box?” Michael asks.

“My mom gave me some papers and stuff of my dad’s,” Kyle says, he glances at the box then Michael. “Your dad told me that he worked together with my dad on Project Shepherd and when I started looking through the box…” Kyle shakes his head.

“Some of the stuff looks like Project Shepherd stuff your dad had, but the other… it all looks like gibberish and nonsense, but then I took a closer look and I think it might be written in code or something and I thought…” Kyle waves his hands and Alex looks at the box with interest.

Jim Valenti and his dad had been friends at one point, though they’d fallen out somewhere around the time that Kyle turned into a dick. But if this was something that Kyle’s dad had from Project Shepherd, something that he thought important enough to write in code somehow… that likely meant he was trying to hide it.

Probably from Jesse Manes, maybe from somebody else.

But it also might be more information on what his dad had _really_ been hoping to accomplish by resurrecting Project Shepherd.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 will start posting late this week, early the following week.
> 
> Thank you guys so much for coming on this wild ride with me! I appreciate every bit of feedback I received and I'm excited about moving into the next story in this universe.


End file.
